FMF-Issue-01-30-26(Featured)

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Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Elon’s Long Game

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Don&rsquo;t Give up on Silver Yet
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Silver surpassed $120 today. It doubled in less than two months.
A picture of silver&rsquo;s chart right now could easily go next to the word &ldquo;hyperbolic&rdquo; in the dictionary.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5kzn3iW2kwDmm9Wwq2MivL/e82a68fa4bf345a40db931a2842507d6/FMF-Issue-01-29-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Yes, it will pull back at some point.
(Checking our screens, &ldquo;some point&rdquo; might be starting today &mdash; the bid now under $110.)
Precious metals guru Don Durrett &mdash; one of the voices outside Paradigm we follow most closely &mdash; figures $85 is the new floor.
Which we&rsquo;ll point out was a record only a month ago.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But after that inevitable pullback, silver is on track to soar even higher.
Within the Paradigm stable, commodities trading veteran Alan Knuckman says based on the charts, he sees a &ldquo;blow-off top coming &mdash; maybe $150 or $200 an ounce.&rdquo;
Macro maven Jim Rickards &mdash; who ignores charts and focuses on fundamentals &mdash; arrives at a very similar conclusion: He wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised to see $200 silver this year.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Even big mainstream Wall Street firms &mdash; which typically hate precious metals because the metals don&rsquo;t generate fat commissions &mdash; are giving silver its due. 
Bank of America&rsquo;s chief of metals research Michael Widmer sees a peak anywhere between $135 and&hellip; brace yourself&hellip; $309.
The high end of that range is based on the gold-silver ratio &mdash; literally the price of gold divided by the price of silver. Here&rsquo;s a very long-term chart of the ratio going back a century&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/55rp0crTtDQXDN2JPsCwLy/ea2833acea8fc1e7a7d912fac480edf3/FMF-Issue-01-29-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
This morning the ratio sits at 46:1 &mdash; down dramatically since last fall. But in 1980, the ratio sank as low as 14:1. Based on gold&rsquo;s price at the start of this year &mdash; $4,326 &mdash; that&rsquo;s how Widmer arrives at his $309 outlier.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If you really want to have fun with this ratio, a silver price of $714 an ounce is not out of the question.
Consider that Jim Rickards is on record projecting a gold price of $10,000 an ounce &mdash; perhaps even by late this year. That&rsquo;s totally plausible when you consider it&rsquo;s already well over $5,000; it wouldn&rsquo;t even have to double from here.
Yesterday, colleague Adam Sharp ran the numbers at The Daily Reckoning: Assuming a $10,000 gold price&hellip; and a gold-silver ratio of 14:1&hellip; well, that&rsquo;s how you get $714 silver.
Yes, that&rsquo;s a far-out projection. But even if silver rises to a level only half of that lofty figure&hellip; well, that gets you very close to the $309 figure that the mainstream won&rsquo;t rule out.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Is the TSLA-to-ELON Transition Underway?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For years, critics said Tesla was not a technology company &mdash; just a car company with extremely pricey shares. As of today, the claim no longer holds water.
Tesla issued its quarterly numbers yesterday after the closing bell. The 61% drop in profits was overshadowed by two announcements&hellip;
<ul>
<li>TSLA will sink $2 billion into Elon Musk&rsquo;s private artificial-intelligence firm xAI</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The company will wind down production of the Model S and Model X at its Fremont, California plant; the factory floor will be converted to making Optimus robots.</li>
</ul>
Last Friday, colleague Davis Wilson at our sister e-letter The Million Mission served up a cheeky proposition: Musk would <a href="https://million-mission.com/posts/ticker-symbol-elon-coming-soon">consolidate all of his sundry businesses under the Tesla umbrella</a>, perhaps changing the ticker symbol to ELON.
Hmmm&hellip; The Tesla investment in xAI seems like a big step in that direction, no?
In the meantime, Wall Street is reacting badly to the slew of announcements, sending TSLA down over 3% as we write.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Elsewhere, you might call today&rsquo;s action on Wall Street a Tale of Two Hyperscalers.
Meta and Microsoft also reported their numbers late yesterday. Both companies beat the estimates of the typical Wall Street analyst. Both projected huge increases in spending on AI during 2026.
And that&rsquo;s where the similarities end. Unlike Meta, Microsoft&rsquo;s spending projections were higher than Wall Street&rsquo;s expectations. With that, MSFT shares are getting clobbered &mdash; down nearly 12% on the day. META on the other hand is up 7%.
It seems the Microsoft news is weighing more on the major U.S. stock averages than Meta&rsquo;s: The S&amp;P 500 is down nearly 1.5% on the day, back below 6,900. The Nasdaq is down 2.5%, while the Dow&rsquo;s losses are about three-quarters of a percent.
Crypto is selling off, too &mdash; Bitcoin under $85,000 and Ethereum approaching $2,800.
Crude, however, is up over two bucks &mdash; above $65 for the first time since late September. There&rsquo;s no new news about U.S. strikes on Iran, but traders continue to price in a growing likelihood.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll admit my mistake,&rdquo; Jim Rickards says after the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s latest policy-setting meeting.
Jim was anticipating a cut of a quarter-percentage point and a badly split vote among the Fed&rsquo;s Open Market Committee of 8-4.
In the event, the FOMC kept the fed funds rate steady at 3.75% and there were only two dissenting votes, both by Trump appointees favoring a cut.
&ldquo;The decision to pause rate cuts had nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with politics,&rdquo; Jim writes his Crisis Trader readers today.
&ldquo;Donald Trump wants lower rates. He has practically declared war on the Federal Reserve to get them. Even when the Fed cut rates as they have in recent meetings, Trump complains they did not cut them enough.
&ldquo;This meeting was Jay Powell&rsquo;s way of poking a stick in Donald Trump&rsquo;s eye. In this effort, he was happily joined by almost the entire board.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Gold, Central Banks and Tether
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Gold is getting smacked along with silver &mdash; tumbling from a peak of $5,575 to below $5,300. As it happens, $5,300 was a record high only yesterday.
The World Gold Council is out with its final report on central bank gold demand in 2025. It fell 20% from 2024 levels &mdash; but is still much higher than at any time before 2022.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7wOa7jarGxtGlhM7p0a2MO/9c20656edb0dcd05a842bc14dfa33b5c/FMF-Issue-01-29-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
As we never tire of pointing out, the buying spree began in 2022 when the Biden administration froze the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank. Government leaders around the world started wondering if it would happen to them too if they did something to offend politicians in D.C. Gold can&rsquo;t be frozen or seized as long as it&rsquo;s in safe storage.
The buying has eased off, but it continues at a healthy clip. As such, central banks continue to keep a floor under the gold price.
Meanwhile, investor demand for gold soared 84% according to the World Gold Council&rsquo;s calculations. &ldquo;The drop in central bank demand was completely overshadowed by the increase we have seen in investment demand,&rdquo; says WGC market strategist John Reade.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Also doing its part to fuel demand &mdash; the stablecoin firm Tether.
&ldquo;We are soon becoming basically one of the biggest, let&rsquo;s say, gold central banks in the world,&rdquo; Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino tells Bloomberg.
El Salvador-based Tether has accumulated about 140 metric tons of gold and is adding another one or two every week &mdash; most of it held underground in Switzerland. Bloomberg calculates over half its stash was acquired last year. Only one central bank in the world, Poland, acquired more.
Most of it is for the company&rsquo;s own reserves; the rest supports a gold-backed stablecoin.
Might the firm dial back its purchases? &ldquo;Maybe we are going to reduce, we don't know yet,&rdquo; Ardoino says. &ldquo;We are going to assess on a quarterly basis our demand for gold.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />On Site at SpaceCom
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;This is the big one. NASA, U.S. Space Force and a who's who list of space companies, from big defense primes to scrappy startups, are all here,&rdquo; says Paradigm tech investing specialist Ray Blanco.
Ray is in Orlando for an event called SpaceCom &mdash; which kicked off last night.
&ldquo;Four thousand attendees,&rdquo; he reports. &ldquo;250-plus exhibitors. Three days of boots-on-the-ground intelligence gathering. &ldquo;My goal is simple: Find the space investment opportunities before they get priced to the moon so we can go along for the ride!&rdquo;
Of course, Ray has to do his due diligence on readers&rsquo; behalf once he gets back home. But here&rsquo;s something that caught his eye right away.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1Yve4HKJuBmsMkQvqdCuho/5d6d990a98aa1a63fdea47b047509488/FMF-Issue-01-29-26_4_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> &ldquo;An aircraft carrier in space&rdquo; [Ray Blanco photo]
It&rsquo;s an orbital carrier. &ldquo;A startup called Gravitics is building them &mdash; think aircraft carriers in space &mdash; and funded by a $60 million U.S. Space Force contract. They expect to launch their first test carrier next year.
&ldquo;If China attacks our satellites in space, we can bypass waiting for launch and deploy from an orbital carrier already in space instead of having to wait on launch from the ground. This enables satellite replacements or defenses in hours instead of weeks. The company is also developing transfer vehicles to move the satellites to their final orbits.
&ldquo;There are commercial applications for satellite constellations as well and the company is also developing space habitats. Gravitics is a private company today but it could become a future opportunity.&rdquo;
In-between presentations, Ray is posting regularly to the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app. It&rsquo;s the only place you can see his regular updates from Orlando today and tomorrow &mdash; along with scads of instant insights from our team of experts. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download here</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Pelosi, Gold Gain
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Your editor inadvertently raised a reader&rsquo;s partisan hackles in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-only-safe-haven-left">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;Where were you when Pelosi was pulling off all her insider trades? Did you profile her like you did Hern? Apologies if I missed it.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Oh, let&rsquo;s see &mdash; how about right off the top of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/todays-issue-is-not-about-pelosis-trades">this edition in 2024</a>? I imagine there are others, but deadline is approaching.
I&rsquo;d never heard of Kevin Hern until yesterday. I didn&rsquo;t notice what party he belongs to, nor do I care, nor did I even mention it. I just thought it was interesting on its own&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;With gold going parabolic in the last few days (using a personal modification on one of Jim's Rickards&rsquo; recommendations) I've realized gains in excess of what I usually make in a year working my job, and it's still January!&rdquo; a reader enthuses.
&ldquo;So I've got to be thinking, when the IRS demands I estimate how much I'm going to make this year, what am I going to tell them, and what happens if I am wrong in either direction? I've never made enough to have to pay upfront before. What do other traders and investors usually do?
&ldquo;I tried seeing a tax accountant and they did not have too much to offer in the way of advice for avoiding giving up the maximum amount possible from short-term gains. But I'm still considering going to see them to help with taxes this year. I've a feeling I'm going to need the help.&rdquo;
Dave responds: As you&rsquo;ve probably figured out by now, identifying investment opportunities is our stock in trade &mdash; &ldquo;personal finance,&rdquo; not so much. And especially not tax planning.
There are just too many permutations to the tax code that affect people in too many different ways.
Please, please consult a tax professional. Especially if you file quarterly estimated taxes. And ideally someone committed to making sure you pay only what you owe and not a cent more!

FMF-Issue-01-29-26(Featured)

Don’t Give up on Silver Yet

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Trump, the Dollar and &ldquo;Safe Havens&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> When it comes to the value of the U.S. dollar, Donald Trump is channeling Alfred E. Neuman, the mascot of the old MAD magazine: &ldquo;What, me worry?&rdquo;
Asked yesterday in Iowa whether he was worried about the dollar&rsquo;s recent drop relative to other major currencies, he said, &ldquo;No, I think it&rsquo;s great.
&ldquo;I mean, the value of the dollar, look at the business we are doing. No, the dollar is &mdash; the dollar is doing great.&rdquo;
And just like that, what had already been a precipitous slide in the U.S. dollar Index since mid-January turned into a rout &mdash; as seen in this candlestick chart from the good folks at StockCharts&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7ktB4fFtpKWODmECvQVj6D/f6fbc37574e8f114fb2b7f5d3dbff241/FMF-Issue-01-28-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
And gold sailed to crazy new heights. Again. At last check the bid is up another $96 to $5,275.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Even before Trump piped up yesterday, the International Monetary Fund said it was making contingency plans for a global run on the dollar.
On Monday, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said her organization is bracing for a rapid sell-off of U.S. dollar-denominated assets.
&ldquo;At the fund, one muscle that we are building is our ability to hypothetically present scenarios of unthinkable events and then figure out what to do,&rdquo; she said during an event in Belgium. Asked if one of those unthinkable events is a run on dollar assets she said the IMF runs &ldquo;all kinds of scenarios.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Unfortunately, when it comes to insulating the global financial system from such a shock, the IMF has no &ldquo;muscle.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s the proverbial 98-pound weakling.
Georgieva&rsquo;s proposed solution is for the European Union to issue its own bonds, on top of those issued by individual EU member states. Because the EU is such a big market, EU bonds would supposedly provide investors an alternative to traditional &ldquo;safe haven&rdquo; assets like U.S. Treasuries and gold.
The idea is a nonstarter. For one thing, leaders of major EU nations like Germany and the Netherlands are dead-set against it.
And even if someone in EU leadership could herd cats and rally everyone around the notion&hellip; who&rsquo;d want to invest in the bonds of a region whose best economic days are behind it?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Which leaves us all with the existing safe havens for scary moments &mdash; U.S. Treasuries and gold. But one of those safe havens is not like the other.
U.S. Treasuries were an outstanding safe haven from the 1980s all the way until 2020. Interest rates were falling steadily &mdash; which pushes bond prices higher. Treasuries were the ideal &ldquo;40&rdquo; component of a 60/40 portfolio: When the 60% of the portfolio devoted to stocks underperformed, the 40% devoted to bonds acted as a shock absorber.
But long-term Treasury rates bottomed in 2020. They&rsquo;ve been climbing steadily since. They don&rsquo;t even respond to moves by the Federal Reserve.
Over the last 40 years, every time the Fed has cut short-term interest rates, long-term rates have fallen in sympathy.
No longer: Since September 2024 the Fed has cut short-term rates from 5.5% to 3.75%. But the yield on a 10-year Treasury note has risen from 3.6% then to 4.25% today.
Higher bond yields, lower bond prices. The whole world knows that no one in Washington, D.C., either Republican or Democrat, will do anything about Uncle Sam&rsquo;s gargantuan $38.5 trillion debt. Medium- and long-term Treasuries are a loser now.
Which leaves gold. Yes, it&rsquo;s setting records day after day. Yes, it&rsquo;s up a nosebleed 23.2% year-to-date already. Yes, it&rsquo;s bound to correct sooner or later before the next leg up.
All we can say at this point is that if you don&rsquo;t have your full gold allocation yet &mdash; Jim Rickards recommends 10% of your investable assets &mdash; that you dollar-cost average. Buy a little bit every week or every month until you get to your 10%. That way you&rsquo;re sure to &ldquo;buy the dip&rdquo; now and then without trying to guess exactly when the gold price will turn up or down.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Market Miscellany
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Next, a quick follow-up to Bullet No. 2 in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/nvda-and-goog-smart-moves">yesterday&rsquo;s edition&hellip;</a>
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5XUFbnpylEIHVYAD53NZw9/d13509b1ce91b8857432e057508d57a8/FMF-Issue-01-28-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
After yesterday&rsquo;s vicious sell-off in the major health insurers &mdash; UnitedHealth tumbled 20% by day&rsquo;s end &mdash; they&rsquo;re enjoying a very modest oversold bounce, UNH up 2.5% as we write.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the broad stock market, the major U.S. indexes are doing what they usually do ahead of a Federal Reserve policy announcement &mdash; treading water.
The S&amp;P 500 poked its nose over 7,000 briefly this morning but has since pulled back to 6,990 &mdash; up less than 0.2% on the day. The Nasdaq is up over a third of a percent while the Dow is flat.
Among the big newsmakers are Amazon &mdash; which just announced its second round of job cuts in the last three months, 16,000 positions this time. AMZN shares are flat on the day ahead of the company&rsquo;s earnings release next week.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Big day for chip stocks,&rdquo; says Davis Wilson of our sister e-letter The Million Mission.
&ldquo;Semiconductor heavyweights ASML and SK Hynix jumped Wednesday after delivering strong earnings, reinforcing that demand across the chip supply chain remains red-hot.
&ldquo;Adding fuel to the rally, China approved sales of Nvidia&rsquo;s H200, pushing NVDA shares higher early in the session and easing fears around export restrictions.
&ldquo;Between ongoing memory chip shortages and relentless AI-driven demand, the semiconductor trade is back in the spotlight &mdash; and investors are paying attention.&rdquo;
Davis posted this nugget on the &ldquo;Daily Feed&rdquo; section of the Paradigm Press mobile app &mdash; where you can get all-day access to instant insights like these. In addition, you get buy and sell alerts for all your paid publications without having to sift through gobs of email. If you haven&rsquo;t already downloaded the app, <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">you can do so right now at this link</a>.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We touched on gold earlier. Silver&rsquo;s gain is not as strong today &mdash; up $1.25 at last check to $113.33.
While silver is in territory that seemed unthinkable only a few weeks ago&hellip; it&rsquo;s been consolidating this week in a volatile range between $102&ndash;117. It&rsquo;s gold that&rsquo;s been playing catch-up &mdash; ending last week just shy of $5,000 and now within sight of $5,300.
As for digital assets, not much to say: Bitcoin is a little under $90,000, Ethereum a little over $3,000.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Crude is over $63 for the first time in four months as Donald Trump issues new threats against Iran.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6DiQtPs9hFJc2uZskgIT9V/3c046b79c8c6034322e59785169cebe5/FMF-Issue-01-28-26_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Why any of this is necessary when he told us last summer that U.S. bombing had &ldquo;completely obliterated&rdquo; Iran&rsquo;s nuclear sites, he did not say.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />85 Seconds to Midnight
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The &ldquo;Doomsday Clock&rdquo; is closer to midnight than it&rsquo;s ever been.
Regularly since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published a clock symbolizing the risk of nuclear Armageddon.
Throughout the Cold War, the clock never got closer than two minutes to midnight. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it&rsquo;s been <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/90-seconds-to-armageddon">90 seconds or less</a>, as seen on this infographic from Statista&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7EeWkgLKJRIr2dEkOLwYgd/fb935162b25617bd102c21ddc5355519/FMF-Issue-01-28-26_5_.png.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
In recent years, the editors of the Bulletin have updated the clock every year during January. This week, they inched the clock forward from 89 seconds to 85.
Among their reasons: The last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia is set to expire one week from today. The &ldquo;New START&rdquo; treaty of 2011 kept a cap on the two sides&rsquo; nuclear arsenals &mdash; each country allowed 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and launchers.
New START will be the second major arms agreement junked under President Trump; during his first term he walked away from Ronald Reagan&rsquo;s Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons from the continent of Europe.
And so next week will mark the first time in over 50 years that there will be no bilateral treaty limiting the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.
The relevance to the markets and the economy, you ask? None &mdash; except there won&rsquo;t be any markets or economy for us to talk about if the Earth is pockmarked with smoldering radioactive craters.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Ditching TikTok
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The new &ldquo;Made in America&rdquo; TikTok is so awful, hordes of users are walking away.
The market research firm Sensor Tower tells CNBC that the daily average number of users deleting the app has spiked 150% since the platform came under U.S. control last Thursday.
We&rsquo;ve chronicled the complaints in recent days: An intrusive new privacy policy&hellip; top users reporting zero views of their videos&hellip; claims of censorship&hellip; or the app just being either slow or unavailable.
And it seems users are seeking out alternatives&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/33qlpktPVC2hwYb0X7WuFh/46ff0c864ed45c72a41b4c341ba3f0dd/FMF-Issue-01-28-26_6_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;This is a textbook case of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand effect</a>,&rdquo; says an observer on X. &ldquo;When platforms tighten censorship, users don&rsquo;t disappear &mdash; they migrate. TikTok&rsquo;s trust problem is becoming a growth engine for competitors, and UpScrolled is capitalizing on that moment perfectly.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I was one of the few Republicans that voted NO against the TikTok Ban,&ldquo; says a tweet from former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia).
[She was one of the few in either party to vote no, as a matter of fact&hellip;]
&ldquo;And now that it&rsquo;s been sold apparently people are getting censored for posting about Epstein and other things. People loved TikTok but they are leaving in droves because banning people&rsquo;s speech is worse than spying on them.&rdquo;
For its part, TikTok&rsquo;s new U.S. management says there are no rules against sharing the name &ldquo;Epstein&rdquo; in direct messages &mdash; a not-very-clever dodge that fails to address the claim that posts are being restricted.
This fiasco is a fitting conclusion to a sorry saga that was years in the making.
Two final observations, originally shared in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/shut-up-and-obey">an issue-length exploration</a> of TikTok a year ago&hellip;
<ul>
<li>No one in either party tried to sell the American people on the urgency of either banning TikTok or bringing it under U.S. control. The politicos just did what they wanted, the people be damned</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>There will be more TikToks in the future: The law that forced the TikTok sale gives the president the authority to ban any website or app at his discretion if it is owned by a person or company in a &ldquo;foreign adversary country.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: 1968&hellip; and 2026
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;This was a fantastic report,&rdquo; says a very late-arriving reader email responding to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-boomer-freak-out-of-2026">our Dec. 18 edition</a> &mdash; exploring a weird historical pattern that suggested that the tumultuous events of 1968 might reverberate during 2026.
(I suppose they already are?)
&ldquo;I remember very well all these events and you are spot-on. You missed the Newark riots, that I must admit was well done in the movie The Many Saints of Newark.
&ldquo;Dave, you are very good at this and you are one of the only nonpartisan reporters left. Thank you very much for sharing these insights.&rdquo;
Dave responds: After publishing that issue, I ran across <a href="https://www.chicago68.com/c68myths.html">a startling but credible claim</a>: At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, &ldquo;an estimated one in six protesters was an undercover agent for the police, the Army or Navy or the FBI.&rdquo;
Doing some further digging, it turns out the estimate originates with a former Army intelligence offier-turned-whistleblower named Christopher Pyle, who turned his Ph.D. dissertation into a book called Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, 1967&ndash;1970.
A 1978 CBS News broadcast also arrived at the one-in-six figure, citing Army sources.
Obviously not all of those faux &ldquo;protesters&rdquo; were agitators or provocateurs&hellip; but it doesn&rsquo;t take very many to stir up trouble.
Something to think about in light of events unfolding on our screens this month&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-28-26(Featured)

The Only Safe Haven Left

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" /> OK, time to take a deep breath&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6F3aqFAnj4yc3rtji2HO1Q/450be07446bebb2358430119be46d29d/FMF-Issue-02-02-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Yes, precious metals got whacked on Friday. They&rsquo;re getting whacked some more today.
Let&rsquo;s try to get some perspective as we look at our screens this morning. Gold is just under $4,700. That level was a record high way back on&hellip; Jan. 19. Two weeks ago.
Silver is a little over $80. That was a record high way back on&hellip; Dec. 28. Barely a month ago.
Meanwhile on X, author Lawrence McDonald reminds us that Microsoft&rsquo;s share price is no higher today than it was in&hellip; March 2024.
Netflix shares trade today for the same price they did in November 2024. And by the same token you&rsquo;d be at breakeven on Tesla shares held since [gulp] November 2021.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The metals had gone up too far, too fast. A reset was inevitable.
What do Paradigm&rsquo;s top experts have to say now? Macro maven Jim Rickards weighed in Friday evening on the Paradigm mobile app&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2xLzcsU5ZsvEa5yX1N89fF/c8caa6f656e170531a5f94ae6cadc6d1/FMF-Issue-02-02-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Trading pro Enrique Abeyta is in broad agreement: &ldquo;Despite the dramatic move last week and the volatility, we are likely to see in coming weeks, the multiyear bull market in silver is not at all over,&rdquo; he writes in our Truth &amp; Trends e-letter, set for publication later today.
&ldquo;In fact, it may still be in its early innings.&rdquo;
None of the factors that drove silver over $50 last year has changed: Supply is tight. Demand is growing. Confidence in fiat currencies both here and abroad is eroding.
The factors that drove silver from $50 to $120? Those did change. The first wave of price appreciation attracted the &ldquo;momentum&rdquo; crowd &mdash; people who don&rsquo;t care about supply or demand or other factors.
&ldquo;These investors do NOT care about the long-term reasons to be bullish silver,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;They only care that the price is going up.
&ldquo;&hellip; and when the price stops going up? They sell.&rdquo;
Simple as that. If you&rsquo;re into silver for the long term, Jim and Enrique say hold on tight. Your patience will be further rewarded.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Markets Today: Rare Earths and Oil
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As a new week begins, the momentum crowd that&rsquo;s ditching silver is suddenly discovering rare earths.
&ldquo;President Donald Trump is set to launch a strategic critical-minerals stockpile with $12 billion in seed money,&rdquo; reports Bloomberg &mdash; &ldquo;a bid to insulate manufacturers from supply shocks as the U.S. works to slash its reliance on Chinese rare earths and other metals.
&ldquo;The venture &mdash; dubbed Project Vault &mdash; is set to marry $1.67 billion in private capital with a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank to procure and store the minerals for automakers, tech firms and other manufacturers.&rdquo;
As always in situations like these, the details are fuzzy. How much of this is new and how much of it is a continuation of Trump administration initiatives from last year? (We chronicled many of these initiatives here in 5 Bullets &mdash; and many Paradigm readers profited from plays on MP Materials and similar names.)
In any event, investors are bidding up many of the big rare earth names today. USA Rare Earth, for instance, is up 11.5%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The broader stock market is starting the week in the green.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up over half a percent to 6,980 &mdash; challenging last week&rsquo;s peak. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s gain is a bit stronger, the Dow&rsquo;s stronger still.
The big economic number of the day is the ISM Manufacturing Index &mdash; which roared higher in January from 47.9 to 52.6.
Numbers over 50 suggest the factory sector is growing &mdash; under 50, shrinking. This figure has spent most of the last three years under that 50 watermark, so we&rsquo;ll be on the lookout for a sustainable rebound.
Speaking of economic data, the Labor Department says there will be no January jobs report this Friday, owing to the &ldquo;partial government shutdown&rdquo; that began over the weekend.
Crypto is in a world of hurt &mdash; Bitcoin a little over $79,000 and that&rsquo;s up from the weekend lows. Ethereum sits under $2,400.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Oil prices have cratered nearly three bucks to $62.23 because U.S. forces did not attack Iran over the weekend.
When we left you on Friday, the price action suggested traders were positioning themselves for some sort of renewed conflict.
But no attack took place: U.S. media report that the Pentagon wants to get more air defenses into place first, while Iranian media report that President Masoud Pezeshkian has ordered new negotiations with Washington about Iran&rsquo;s civilian nuclear program.
Back stateside&hellip; there&rsquo;s a merger to report in the energy sector, creating a major player in shale oil: Devon Energy is combining with Coterra Energy in a $58 billion all-stock deal. DVN shares are up more than a half-percent as we write while CTRA is down over 2%.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Space Is Vast&hellip; But This Is Bigger
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I&rsquo;m thinking about how major shifts happen. The world transforms quietly while we're looking elsewhere. By the time most people notice, the change is already complete,&rdquo; muses Paradigm tech-investing pro Ray Blanco.
&ldquo;I think we're in one of those moments right now &mdash; and it's not just AI or the breakthroughs happening on the ground.&rdquo;
Ray couldn&rsquo;t help being awed in this way attending the SpaceCom event in Orlando &mdash; which wrapped up on Friday.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/mHCeebTtMjF3Buhy82ipw/44c40597bcbc9c85c75b5561ab91a125/FMF-Issue-02-02-26_3_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Our man in Orlando&hellip;
&ldquo;Something bigger is taking shape overhead,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;A new layer of infrastructure beyond our planet &mdash; intelligence, connectivity and industrial capability that's already reshaping how the economy works.
&ldquo;We call it &lsquo;space,&rsquo; but that word feels too small for what I've been witnessing here. It's infrastructure that will be as fundamental as railroads were when they were built or the internet.
&ldquo;Most investors will recognize this shift years from now after it's already happened. You're learning about it today while the foundation is still being poured.
&ldquo;Generational wealth is made by those who see the trend before it becomes obvious. That's the difference between watching wealth being created and creating it yourself.
&ldquo;This has been an incredible three days not only for my current research, but for my understanding of where breakthrough tech is headed next.&rdquo;
Ray will share more of his takeaways with his readers in the days and weeks ahead, so keep an eye out.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Aliens and Markets
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Here&rsquo;s a problem we hadn&rsquo;t started thinking about yet &mdash; disruptions to the markets caused by disclosure about aliens.
But a former analyst for the United Kingdom&rsquo;s central bank is thinking about it.
Helen McCaw is her name and she&rsquo;s dashed off a letter to Bank of England chief Andrew Bailey. The Times of London got its hands on the letter.
&ldquo;The United States government,&rdquo; she wrote, &ldquo;appears to be partway through a multiyear process to declassify and disclose information on the existence of a technologically advanced nonhuman intelligence responsible for unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).
&ldquo;If the UAP proves to be of nonhuman origin, we may have to acknowledge the existence of a power or intelligence greater than any government and with potentially unknown intentions.&rdquo;
Hmmm&hellip; McCaw attributes far greater &ldquo;intelligence&rdquo; to government than is deserved.
Be that as it may, she speculates that disclosure might spur a rush toward safe-haven assets including bonds and gold.
On the other hand, she said precious metals might lose their luster if all of a sudden there would be an influx of metal arriving from outer space.
Beyond that, she speculates &ldquo;there might be extreme price volatility in financial markets due to catastrophising or euphoria, and a collapse in confidence if market participants feel uncertain on how to price assets using any of the familiar methods.&rdquo;
She left out the part about government insiders trading on inside information &mdash; which seems like the surest outcome of all!
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />What Goes Into the Mailbag?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Hi, I&rsquo;m quite disappointed you didn&rsquo;t feature my reply about 9/11,&rdquo; a reader writes.
&ldquo;You guys should consider incorporating a few more reader responses in your daily 5 Bullets.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Sorry to disappoint in this instance &mdash; although we&rsquo;re heartened to see that you follow our scribblings so closely!
There are many variables that go into deciding which reader emails we include in the issues, and which don&rsquo;t make the cut.
If there&rsquo;s a lot going on in the news and the markets &mdash; which has been the case lately &mdash; we&rsquo;ll tend to showcase less reader mail unless there&rsquo;s a truly hot topic.
Other variables include informational value, entertainment value and whether the reader&rsquo;s musings inspire a tangent on my part.
In your own case, I didn&rsquo;t want to get too far afield from our financial beat. We had a longtimer write in response to my issue-length exploration of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/usd1-5-trillion">the military-industrial complex</a>. He had a handful of interesting points and then proceeded to assert that 9/11 was an inside job.
I wasn&rsquo;t about to suppress that portion of his email but neither was I going to open up a days-long debate about it. So I briefly said my piece and dropped the matter.
The exclusion of your email had nothing to do with whether you had something worthwhile to say &mdash; and I encourage you to keep writing!

FMF-Issue-02-02-26(Featured)

Gold & Silver: What Changed

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The &ldquo;Lag 7&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If recent history is any guide, this week should be the biggest week of earnings season. 
In mid-2023, Bank of America analyst Michael Hartnett coined the term &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo; &mdash; applying it to a select group of tech-adjacent megacap stocks.
In alphabetical order they&rsquo;re Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.
The Mag 7 were the engine powering the broad stock market during 2023 and 2024. Typically, five of the seven would report their quarterly earnings in the same week. Wall Street waited breathlessly for the numbers and conference calls. Financial media devoted as much hype to these weeks as they did to Federal Reserve meetings.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And then came 2025.
Wall Street still waited breathlessly and the media still devoted oodles of airtime and bandwidth.
But the juice was gone. The S&amp;P 500 rose 16.4% for the year&hellip; and only two of the Mag 7 outdelivered the broad market.
Alphabet (GOOG) sailed 65% higher, while Nvidia (NVDA) rose 39%. The rest underperformed an S&amp;P 500 index fund. Jokes started to abound about the &ldquo;Lag 7.&rdquo;
This week, four of those underperformers report their numbers &mdash; Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Tesla.
Alphabet used to be part of this frenzy every January, April, July and September. This time, however, it&rsquo;s sitting out &mdash; waiting to report its numbers until next week. Nvidia, for its part, has always reported several weeks after its Mag 7 brethren.
Smart move in both cases. If you&rsquo;re crushing it, best to report your numbers when they won&rsquo;t get lost in the shuffle of everyone else&rsquo;s numbers.
And so the &ldquo;biggest week of earnings season&rdquo; no longer has the razzle-dazzle it once did. Heck, CNBC thought it was worthy of &ldquo;Breaking News&rdquo; this morning when old-economy stalwarts Boeing and General Motors reported their numbers.
Times change&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Health Care: Crack in the System
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The big story on Wall Street today is the first obvious crack in an unsustainably costly U.S. health care system &mdash; not that the media are framing it in those terms.
&ldquo;The Trump administration is proposing roughly flat rates for Medicare insurers next year,&rdquo; reports The Wall Street Journal. 
Oops &mdash; Wall Street analysts were counting on an increase between 4&ndash;6%.
With that, Mr. Market is mercilessly punishing the big providers of Medicare Advantage plans: CVS Health (CVS) is down 10.8% at last check... UnitedHealth (UNH) down 18.5%&hellip; Humana (HUM) down 19.3%.
Your editor has been writing about the staggering costs of the American health care system for over a decade &mdash; <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/health-care-on-trial">most recently over the holidays</a>.
Health care took up barely 6% of all federal spending in 1970. Today that share has swelled to over 35%.
Something&rsquo;s got to give.
Perhaps Wall Street is starting to wake up to that reality, given the price action in the insurance stocks today. The Trump administration will make a final call on the compensation those companies get in April.
If you&rsquo;re on a Medicare Advantage plan right now &mdash; more than half of Medicare beneficiaries are &mdash; it&rsquo;s not too early to start thinking about what your world would look like if the system can no longer sustain these plans and your only option is a more costly Medicare supplement or &ldquo;Medigap&rdquo; plan.
At present one major health care provider &mdash; Mayo Clinic &mdash; already turns away patients who have only Medicare Advantage coverage.
Many others are likely to join Mayo&rsquo;s ranks if events continue on their current trajectory&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the broader stock market, it&rsquo;s a mixed bag: The S&amp;P 500 is up a half percent as we write to 6,984.
If that number holds by day&rsquo;s end, it would be a record close. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, is up nearly 1%. But the Dow is down three-quarters of a percent, dragged down by the aforementioned UNH.
The action in precious metals so far this week has been dizzying &mdash; up huge Sunday night, down huge last night, up substantially (but not huge) today. Checking our screens gold is about 12 bucks shy of $5,100 while silver is over $108.
&ldquo;Volatility is likely to stick around,&rdquo; colleague Sean Ring writes in today&rsquo;s Rude Awakening. &ldquo;Scalpers will sell overbought rallies. Those sell-offs may overshoot. Price may spend time carving out a messy range while positioning resets.&rdquo; (If you want the play-by-play of everything behind the whipsaw moves of the last 48 hours, <a href="https://rudeawakening.info/posts/silver-shellacking">Sean&rsquo;s your guy</a>.)
Crypto is gamely trying to stage a comeback, Bitcoin back over $88,000 and Ethereum at $2,967.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Crude is up 1.7% as the war drums beat louder in the Middle East again.
&ldquo;The U.S. is weighing precision strikes on &lsquo;high-value&rsquo; Iranian officials and commanders who it deems responsible for the deaths of protesters,&rdquo; reports Middle East Eye, citing &ldquo;a Gulf official familiar with the discussions.&rdquo;
Judging by the U.S. bombing of Iran last year and the kidnapping of Venezuelan strongman Nicol&aacute;s Maduro this year, Donald Trump is keen for lightning-quick action &mdash; and no U.S. casualties.
If that&rsquo;s not a viable option this time, The Jerusalem Post reports that Washington is considering a blockade on Iranian oil shipments, similar to the one imposed on Venezuela late last year.
But that too comes with considerable risk, as the military analyst Will Schryver tweets&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3ra3da9U457Wa1iQhafooe/ef1c2745699a74c3b7d67a3f5a64dd36/FMF-Issue-01-27-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Amid these cross-currents, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate fetches $61.66 &mdash; on the high end of its trading range this month.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Division and Dissension at the Fed
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Paradigm macro maven Jim Rickards is sticking his neck out.
This morning the Federal Reserve began one of its policy-setting meetings held eight times a year. At the conclusion of that meeting tomorrow afternoon, Jim expects the Fed will cut the benchmark fed funds rate another quarter percentage point to 3.5%. (It was 4.5% as recently as last summer.)
This expectation is far outside the consensus. Looking at the action in fed funds futures this morning, traders assign a 97% probability the Fed will &ldquo;pause&rdquo; its recent rate-cutting cycle and hold the rate steady at 3.75%.
Note well: Jim has had a near-perfect record calling both the direction and magnitude of Fed rate moves for the last four years.
At issue this time is &ldquo;Powell&rsquo;s loss of control of his own board,&rdquo; says Jim. Powell favors a quarter percentage point cut, and so do some of his colleagues. But other members of the Fed&rsquo;s Open Market Committee favor a steeper cut of a half percentage point, while others favor leaving the rate where it is now.
&ldquo;The result,&rdquo; says Jim, &ldquo;may be an 8-4 vote in favor of the 0.25% rate cut where the four dissenters are of two different minds &mdash; some supporting a larger cut and some supporting no cut at all.
&ldquo;This nuance will be lost on everyday Americans and the media. All they will see is a large dissenting vote.&rdquo;
Fed chairs have long exercised an iron grip over the other committee members. But now the level of division and dissension is its highest since the 1980s.
The fact Powell is a lame duck only adds to the sense of things flying apart. He&rsquo;s running only three more meetings until his term as chair is up in May &mdash; and that&rsquo;s assuming he doesn&rsquo;t quit early under pressure from Donald Trump.
&ldquo;That can only unsettle markets more than they already are,&rdquo; Jim concludes.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />&ldquo;New and Improved&rdquo; TikTok (Continued&hellip;)
When we left you yesterday&hellip; we took note that under the platform&rsquo;s new U.S.-based majority owners, users were complaining about both an intrusive new terms of service (collecting data on everything from precise location to the user&rsquo;s mental health) and the suppression of news from the &ldquo;For You&rdquo; tab.
Now come accusations that posts about the late financier and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein are being censored &mdash; which, of course, California Gov. Gavin Newsom glommed onto for partisan advantage&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/64TBX86clEnvy75rioz1CE/22f75d7b82de1c9b381c457b461c31a8/FMF-Issue-01-27-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Elsewhere we see widespread complaints that the platform simply isn&rsquo;t available. The Downdetector site tells the BBC it got over 663,000 reports of issues from U.S. users of TikTok starting on Saturday and continuing through yesterday. Other users noticed the videos they uploaded had less visibility than before or were even &ldquo;stuck at zero views.&rdquo;
For its part, TikTok&rsquo;s new U.S. management said yesterday that users might notice "multiple bugs, slower load times or timed-out requests" that it blamed on a power outage at a data center owned by Oracle (which now owns 15% of TikTok).
"While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we've been working to resolve together with our data center partner." it said.
And yet, TikTok seems to be working just fine in the rest of the world, where China-based Bytedance retains majority ownership. Go figure&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: $1.5 Trillion
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Wow Dave, this issue was exceptional,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/usd1-5-trillion">last Friday&rsquo;s edition</a> exploring the underbelly of the military-industrial complex.
&ldquo;You have addressed most of these points in past issues but this was an extremely well-done piece. It ought to be used as a primer for any class on recent history. No buts. Surely there will be some simpletons who read it as an attack on some of their heroes &mdash; ignore them. You're doing good work, keep it up.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Outstanding 5 Bullets on Jan 23, Dave &mdash; one of your best over the past year,&rdquo; says another. &ldquo;Great to see a little bit of Bill Bonner and libertarian philosophy carried over from Agora into Paradigm Press. Now if you could just convince Jim Rickards and Buck Sexton to read it!&rdquo;
&ldquo;Excellent commentary!&rdquo; enthuses a third. &ldquo;Needed to be spelled out &mdash; you did that very neatly. As good as Chris Campbell &mdash; only different. Thank you.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Love Chris, so that&rsquo;s high praise indeed!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Not everyone is in accord: &ldquo;Maybe Dave Gonigam is a good managing editor, but he is an awful columnist.
&ldquo;I think I made it to Bullet No. 3 this time &mdash; and that was a struggle.&rdquo;
Dave: I appreciate the very specific feedback, laying out your objections so systematically. It will undoubtedly enable me to do a better job in the future.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Really good post &mdash; spot-on regarding the assertions,&rdquo; writes our final correspondent &mdash; a longtimer who&rsquo;s not afraid to rake me over the coals now and then.
&ldquo;AND... one thing caught my eye. You presume al-Qaida was responsible for the attacks. Is that so?
&ldquo;Gotta call bull*** on that one, and I imagine you would too if you didn't fear being cast as... god forbid... conspiracy theorists.
&ldquo;Well, I'm an unapologetic conspiracy theorist and conspiracy factist... the Wuhan shots... the rigging of multiple financial markets, especially silver... the Maidan shenanigans... the ballot fraud in the 2020 election. The list goes on for quite a while. My track record of correct calls is pretty much unblemished.
&ldquo;Later you say, correctly: &lsquo;Sept. 11, 2001, was also the day many conservatives abandoned their suspicions of Big Government.&rsquo;
&ldquo;YEAH... THAT WAS THE PRECISE DESIRED EFFECT. Mission accomplished.
&ldquo;Cheney's dead now and I guess it's unseemly to continue my cheering, but what an interesting story he might have been loose enough to tell under the influence of truth serum.
&ldquo;It was an inside job, and only the willfully ignorant or those with an interest in perpetuating the con could possibly disagree, given the overwhelming mountain of evidence.
&ldquo;Most can't admit the truth re: 9/11. It would set their worldview on tilt. I get that and I sympathize, but the truth is the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient it is... to coin a phrase.
&ldquo;Again, your analysis is dead on.&rdquo;
Dave: Thank you. I think the already-known and widely acknowledged facts about 9/11 are damning enough &mdash; particularly the involvement of high-level Saudi Arabian officials, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/11/21/911-families-lawsuit-links-saudi-officials-to-plot-despite-princes-denial">about which we continue to learn more</a> 24 years later.
And yet the whole time, U.S. presidents have bowed and scraped before King Fahd, King Abdullah, King Salman and now Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Obama and Trump aided and abetted a Saudi Arabian genocide in Yemen &mdash; for which someone in Yemen might, one day, decide to hold the American people at large responsible and carry out a large-scale attack on U.S. territory. And the whole cycle would begin anew&hellip;
But on one point I&rsquo;m in full agreement: Every new crisis, whatever its origins, is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/9-11-the-financial-crisis-and-covid">an excuse for a new power grab</a>. And so it goes.

FMF-Issue-01-27-26(Featured)

NVDA and GOOG: Smart Moves

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Forecast Fulfilled (USAR)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Uncle Sam&rsquo;s stock-buying spree is moving into an aggressive new phase&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/MwLOFboBFMU5y7MXWoFcB/315da09f9e99687ce131f6b4d97eddd6/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;The Trump administration is planning to inject $1.6 billion into an American rare earths company, its biggest investment in the sector,&rdquo; reported the Financial Times on Saturday &mdash; &ldquo;in Washington&rsquo;s latest foray into private industry to shore up supplies of key minerals.&rdquo;
Citing the usual &ldquo;people familiar with the matter,&rdquo; the FT says the Commerce Department will take a 10% stake in USA Rare Earth (USAR). A formal announcement is expected today.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> To be sure, management was dropping hints about this arrangement as long ago as October. We chronicled it right here.
On Thursday Oct. 2, CEO Barbara Humpton told CNBC her company is &ldquo;in close communication&rdquo; with the White House.
CFO Robert Steele was more specific &mdash; saying the government might be &ldquo;a capital source through the combination of loans, grants and other potential opportunities.&rdquo;
Key point: The Pentagon had already taken a 15% stake in another rare-earth player, MP Materials last summer (much to the benefit of many Paradigm Press readers.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> All of this is music to the ears of Paradigm readers who took action back in August.
On Thursday Aug. 7, we convened our first &ldquo;All-In Summit.&rdquo;
Our macro maven Jim Rickards&hellip; our AI-and-crypto authority James Altucher&hellip; our trading pro Enrique Abeyta&hellip; all of them were in agreement USAR was a screaming buy.
After management began dropping hints about a deal with the feds in early October, shares began to soar. On Oct. 13, readers were urged to sell half their position for a 191% gain. The timing couldn&rsquo;t have been better; that sell recommendation marked a near-term top.
The rest of the position? Let it ride, readers were told. This is textbook money management &mdash; and it&rsquo;s paying off handsomely. Of course, shares are taking off again this morning &mdash; up 19% in early trade.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/41la5M4yIOukjn66WWqPKc/26a2e65caa7917c52ab017d609c2e571/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Whether or not you laid on this trade&hellip; you might naturally wonder when Paradigm&rsquo;s leading lights might come to a consensus on another recommendation with similar potential.
All I can do today is to counsel patience.
The last thing we want to do is force our editors to reach agreement where agreement doesn&rsquo;t really exist just so we can sell more subscriptions. Agreement has to be reached authentically.
That said, I&rsquo;ve been privy to some very interesting backchannel discussions in recent days. Something&rsquo;s in the works that might not be exactly like the USAR recommendation&hellip; but that I think readers will like.
That&rsquo;s all I can say right now without violating any confidences. But watch this space as we move from January into February&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Gold $5K
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Do you see any bearish catalysts in the near future that would signal an end to the current gold bull market?&rdquo; a reader wrote Jim Rickards last week.
If anything, the question is even more timely this morning. Gold punched decisively through $5,000 when electronic trading opened for the week last night. And just like that, $5,100 is in sight; at last check the bid is up $111 to $5,094. Silver is screaming even higher &mdash; up $8.76 as we write to $111.84.
Jim&rsquo;s answer to Strategic Intelligence readers: &ldquo;No.
&ldquo;The drivers of higher gold prices include net buying by central banks, flat mining output, buying as an alternative to U.S. Treasuries since the U.S. is now stealing Treasury securities from lawful holders such as Russia, the fact that Russia has survived economic sanctions because over 25% of its reserves were held in the form of physical gold and the use of gold by BRICS members as an alternative to the dollar.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s a mouthful &mdash; but it gives you the rough idea that the rally is nowhere near over.
&ldquo;The retail frenzy stage has not yet started but that&rsquo;s coming,&rdquo; says Jim, who still anticipates gold will reach $10,000 before it&rsquo;s all over. Maybe even before year-end 2026.
In the meantime, congratulations are in order for Strategic Intelligence subscribers who bagged a 460% gain on Hecla Mining after a hold time of only seven months. &ldquo;Hard-to-believe gains!&rdquo; a happy reader wrote to the 5 Bullets inbox.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the near term, gold&rsquo;s strength over the last year is largely a function of dollar weakness.
The U.S. dollar index &mdash; which measures the greenback against a basket of a half-dozen developed-market currencies &mdash; is down 10% since early 2025. In the world of currencies, that&rsquo;s an earthquake.
And the trend is continuing today amid rumors that Washington will coordinate some sort of action with the Japanese government to support the yen.
It&rsquo;s the Trump administration&rsquo;s policy to weaken the dollar this way. &ldquo;When a government is incentivized to cheapen its currency to monetize its debt, it's madness for investors to fight that policy,&rdquo; Sean Ring writes in today&rsquo;s Rude Awakening. 
&ldquo;Going with the flow is the easiest money you&rsquo;ll ever make.&rdquo;
Which means metals and miners. &ldquo;Gold and silver will continue to rise, maybe with a bump or two along the way,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And while the miners have performed, they&rsquo;re still priced as if gold is trading at $3,500 and silver is at $40.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Inflation Flashbacks: Is It the &rsquo;70s Again?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If history rhymes, the big spike of inflation in 2022 is only a preview of coming attractions.
From our trading pro Enrique Abeyta: &ldquo;Fascinating chart from Bank of America comparing the year-over-year increase in inflation from the 1970s to the most recent period starting in 2018&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1bq58gvGKH3r4KhYcpMOfN/039e01a87937d234a872a22f6a70eda3/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
We caution that &ldquo;analog&rdquo; charts like these are compelling &mdash; but not predictive by definition.
&ldquo;No reason inflation will necessarily follow through and track like it has&hellip; but kind of scary,&rdquo; Enrique allows.
This much is certain: Inflation is proving to be &ldquo;sticky&rdquo; going by the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s preferred gauge, a measure called core PCE. Last week the Commerce Department reported that year-over-year core PCE edged up from 2.7% in October to 2.8% in November.
As we can&rsquo;t remind you often enough&hellip; once the inflation rate sails past 5% as it did in 2022, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/declare-your-independence-from-inflation">it takes a decade on average</a> to get back to &ldquo;normal&rdquo; 2% levels.
[Editor&rsquo;s note: Enrique shared this chart on the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app &mdash; a place where our editors deliver hot takes on the economy and the markets you won&rsquo;t find anywhere else. It&rsquo;s also an easy way to track your buy and sell alerts without sifting through your email. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download here</a>.]
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As earnings season moves into high gear, the major U.S. stock market indexes are starting the week in the green.
Several of the &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo; companies report their numbers this week as well as a slew of financial, industrial and energy names.
But that&rsquo;s not till Wednesday. For the moment, the S&amp;P 500 is up a half percent on the day to 6,951. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s gain is stronger, the Dow&rsquo;s weaker.
Elsewhere, crypto continues to hurt, Bitcoin at $87,307 and Ethereum just under $3,000. &ldquo;Until crypto can string together some winning sessions, it&rsquo;s looking like lower for longer will be the story,&rdquo; writes Greg Guenthner at The Trading Desk.
Crude has pulled back slightly to $60.61. Traders bid up oil late last week because they didn&rsquo;t want to be &ldquo;short&rdquo; going into a weekend when there was the possibility of a new U.S. attack on Iran. But that didn&rsquo;t come to pass, so now oil is selling off.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In contrast, electricity prices are surging in areas affected by the big winter storm. 
&ldquo;Real-time wholesale electricity prices &zwj;topped $1,800 per MWh early Sunday &zwj;in Dominion Energy&rsquo;s &zwj;Virginia territory,&rdquo; reports CNBC &mdash; &ldquo;up from $200 per MWh on Saturday morning. Virginia houses the largest cluster of data centers in the world.&rdquo;
The regional grid operator PJM expects record wintertime demand tomorrow as the storm is followed by a cold snap. With that in mind, PJM &ldquo;is pushing power plants to secure natural gas supplies through the week,&rdquo; reports Bloomberg.
Specifically PJM &ldquo;is taking a rare step of committing to buy power from generators through 10 a.m. on Jan. 31, as opposed to its typical method of making day-ahead purchases.&rdquo;
As such, PJM anticipates it will be able to avert rolling blackouts.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The &ldquo;New and Improved&rdquo; TikTok
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> TikTok is now under U.S. control &mdash; and users are noticing. They&rsquo;re not happy.
The long-anticipated sale was consummated last Thursday, China-based ByteDance retaining 19.9% ownership.
The new arrangement complies with a 2024 law that ordered TikTok to shut down unless ByteDance sold. The other 80.1% will be owned by a group of investors including Oracle and the Emirati investment firm MGX.
No sooner did the deal close than TikTok &ldquo;made changes to its privacy policy that include expanding the type of location data the company can collect from its 200 million American users,&rdquo; reports the BBC.
&ldquo;The new joint venture said in its updated privacy terms that it may now &lsquo;collect precise location data, depending on your settings&rsquo; - a change from the previous policy which allowed for the collection of &lsquo;approximate&rsquo; location data.&rdquo;
And there&rsquo;s more, as shown in this screenshot making the rounds on other social media platforms&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5FChLvqLVXxHqgb7oRnn4e/dde4570edd78a5bb925e0d17a496ac8c/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Beyond the terms of service, the user experience is also changing in a big way.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7sZdaYY9kZ0d7GT79VUClL/cf4317f78c6c0fba750f01aed466269a/FMF-Issue-01-26-26_5_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
To be clear, he&rsquo;s talking about the &ldquo;For You&rdquo; tab. News is still available if that&rsquo;s what you want &mdash; but you have to search for a specific topic.
Love it. The whole rationale in Congress for lowering the boom on TikTok was that the Chinese government was spying on and propagandizing TikTok&rsquo;s U.S. users. (There was never any evidence to support that claim.)
But now that Oracle&rsquo;s Larry Ellison is large and in charge, it&rsquo;s just peachy keen to hoover up location data and anything users disclose about, say, their mental health &mdash; while at the same time suppressing vigorous dialogue about the issues of the day.
Reminder: Ellison <a href="https://x.com/jimstewartson/status/2002457225726759218">can&rsquo;t wait</a> for the arrival of a surveillance state where &ldquo;citizens will be on their best behavior because we&rsquo;re constantly recording everything that&rsquo;s going on.&rdquo;
<ul>
<li>Still unclear is whether this change to the algorithm is slamming <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/small-business-under-threat-again">small businesses</a> that rely on TikTok to sell their wares. (If you&rsquo;re a small-business owner with any insight, please write: <a href="mailto:feedback@paradigmpressroom.com">feedback@paradigmpressroom.com</a>)</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Gratitude
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> From the mailbag comes this item submitted by a reader who joined Paradigm last August at the time of our All-In Summit. Presumably he&rsquo;s faring handsomely from the editors&rsquo; USAR recommendation&hellip;
&ldquo;Hi Dave and Emily &mdash; I just retired last year and with that I took over my wife's and my portfolio to try and make sure that we have enough to get by. In doing so, we stumbled on Paradigm through a circuitous route. I don't normally reach out like this, but with the storm coming, I feel uncommonly grateful this morning.
&ldquo;Grateful that we have a home, a full tank of oil, some really good friends we could lean on if things got tough, some amazingly beautiful human beings as adult children and even enough food.
&ldquo;With that being said, I wanted to let you both know that in these CRAZY times, I appreciate your thoughtful, well-written articles. I know you get pushback from some people (refer to: CRAZY times), but I wanted to let you know that I'm a fan. Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Emily and I are blown away by your kindness. Thank you. (And stay warm wherever you are.)
Like any business, we have certain metrics that we follow and numerical goals we aim to meet. But a note like yours reminds us that as long as we empower satisfied customers like you&hellip; the numbers will take care of themselves.

FMF-Issue-01-26-26(Featured)

Forecast Fulfilled (USAR)

FMF-Issue-01-23-26(Featured)

$1.5 Trillion 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Fed Fallout: Main Character Energy
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;This is how monetary policy is made in emerging markets with weak institutions.&rdquo;
That sentence appeared in a joint public statement released this month by former Federal Reserve chairs &mdash; including Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan &mdash; responding to the Justice Department opening a criminal inquiry into Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
Such tactics, they say high-handedly, have &ldquo;highly negative consequences for inflation and the functioning of [economies] more broadly&hellip; It has no place in the United States, whose greatest strength is the rule of law, which is at the foundation of our economic success.&rdquo;
Days later, President Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be announcing a new Fed chairman in the not too distant future,&rdquo; adding &ldquo;we have a terrible chairman right now.&rdquo;
The reaction from the Davos set was swift &mdash; and anxious. Which is understandable. But it also invites a reality check.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Federal Reserve independence has never been absolute. Presidents have pressured central bankers for as long as the institution has existed.
In the 1960s, for instance, President Lyndon B. Johnson physically manhandled Fed chair William McChesney Martin over interest rates.
Martin&rsquo;s successor, Arthur Burns, accommodated President Richard Nixon ahead of the 1972 election, a decision that helped fuel the inflationary mess of the 1970s.
More recently, President Joe Biden publicly reminded Powell that getting inflation under control rested squarely on the Fed.
&ldquo;To this day the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are owned privately by the banks in each region,&rdquo; Jim Rickards notes. &ldquo;Direction is provided by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System appointed by the U.S. president and based in Washington, D.C.
<a href="https://5minforecast.com/2023/05/16/aftershock/">&ldquo;The overall system</a> is a perfect hybrid of public and private interests.&rdquo;
So the idea that Trump has shattered some previously pristine norm is overstated. What has changed is the scale of the Fed&rsquo;s power &mdash; and the consequences of wielding it so openly.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed and its global peers crossed lines that once seemed uncrossable. 
Policy rates fell to zero or below. Quantitative easing (QE) expanded central-bank balance sheets by trillions. The European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan all followed similar paths.
Markets responded exactly as intended. Asset prices soared, borrowing costs collapsed and governments discovered they could finance deficits cheaply and almost indefinitely .
The lesson for elected officials was unavoidable: Monetary policy could stimulate the economy faster and more forcefully than fiscal policy ever could.
As Eric Salzman writes at Racket News, that lesson dramatically increased the temptation to influence the Fed:
<blockquote>By deploying extraordinary monetary policy from 2008&ndash;2018 and then from 2020&ndash;2022, the Fed has shown every president, both present and future, that those powers can juice the economy in ways that fiscal policy can rarely match.</blockquote>
Once a central bank demonstrates it can move markets with a sentence, presidents inevitably care who holds the microphone at post-FOMC press conferences.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> That microphone amplified under Alan Greenspan &mdash; nickname: &ldquo;the Maestro&rdquo; &mdash; whose tenure marked the Fed&rsquo;s brush with mainstream celebrity. 
And it reached a fever pitch after the financial crisis of 2008 when Ben Bernanke rewrote the central-bank playbook with zero rates, massive asset purchases and a banking-system bailout &mdash; later memorialized in Bernanke&rsquo;s self-aggrandizing memoir.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1FrGZMDDlC1mdwR6pNcyLM/ad46eb5e3ff4e71c5d985821ff0187d6/FMF-Issue-01-22-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Bernanke&rsquo;s book advance has never been disclosed&hellip;
From that point forward, the Fed was no longer just a regulator. It had, to quote the kids, main character energy.
FOMC meetings became national events, press conferences were parsed like earnings calls and regional Fed presidents became media fixtures. They traveled to Davos and Jackson Hole not as technicians, but as global figures.
This visibility was not imposed on the Fed. It was chosen. And once chosen, independence became harder to defend. A central bank that cultivates such attention cannot plausibly claim insulation from politics.
That&rsquo;s the missing context behind the Lisa Cook case.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> When Trump moved to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook for cause &mdash; citing alleged mortgage fraud &mdash; Cook refused to leave, setting off a legal fight now before the Supreme Court. 
This week, SCOTUS heard arguments in the case. The justices&rsquo; questions signaled real discomfort with the idea that a president could unilaterally declare &ldquo;cause&rdquo; under the Federal Reserve Act.
For now, Cook remains on the job while the courts sort it out. (It&rsquo;s fair to note that no court has ruled that Cook committed mortgage fraud for two homes purchased in 2021.)
But the episode exposes the Fed&rsquo;s real vulnerability. This is the price of prominence. A quieter Fed &mdash; one that operated without the aura of omnipotence &mdash; might be harder to target. (Perhaps Ms. Cook&rsquo;s mortgage paperwork would not have drawn this level of attention?)
True, the Fed has never been truly independent from politics. Presidents have always leaned on, nudged and sometimes even shoved.
But what changed after 2008 is the Fed showed off how much it can do &mdash; indefinite QE, asset purchases, full-spectrum market support &mdash; and then built a public ritual around that power.
With power came attention. And power and attention invite attempts to control the institution &mdash; whether through nominations, investigations or court fights.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Bond Exit, Stock Stampede
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;While foreigners may be SELLING AMERICAN bonds, they appear to be BUYING AMERICAN stocks!&rdquo; pro trader Enrique Abeyta emphasizes.
We touched on bonds earlier this week &mdash; using <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-price-cap-trap#3">China</a> as a clear example. Compared with January 2025, China&rsquo;s Treasury exposure is now nearly 10% lower.
&ldquo;Foreign-held U.S. equities as a percentage of foreign-held assets is at a new all-time high, breaking the previous record set back in 1968,&rdquo; Enrique notes.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6akfryh2978qE11ARv6Vvb/a1e57e51363d1184082cec3da9a86fde/FMF-Issue-01-22-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: NDR Inc.
Stocks are setting up nicely this afternoon. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s up 1% to 23,460 while the Dow and S&amp;P 500 are up 0.80% and 0.65% respectively.
As for crude, it&rsquo;s down 2%, under $60 for a barrel of WTI. But gold and silver are scorching hot! At record-breaking prices, in fact. Gold&rsquo;s up 1.70% to $4,920 per ounce, and silver&rsquo;s up 3.70% to $95.
The crypto market, however, is seeing red. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 0.40% to $89,500 while Ethereum&rsquo;s down 2.45% to $2,945.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The New Gold Order
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For most of the modern era, gold pricing power rested firmly in the West.
&ldquo;The world&rsquo;s gold trade revolved around two cities: London and New York,&rdquo; says Fiore Group CEO Frank Giustra. Those markets &mdash; anchored by the London Bullion Market Association and New York&rsquo;s futures exchange (COMEX) &mdash; set prices for bullion across the globe.
Giustra&rsquo;s career unfolded inside that system. In the 1980s, he moved to London to help finance junior mining companies, raising capital as European institutions piled into gold. The structure was clear and dollar-centric.
&ldquo;The prices you see ticking across your screen today &mdash; &lsquo;spot gold&rsquo; and &lsquo;gold futures&rsquo; &mdash; still come from the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and COMEX,&rdquo; he writes. Every ounce, regardless of origin, was priced in U.S. dollars.
That dominance was a legacy of Bretton Woods. In 1944, the dollar was pegged to gold at $35 an ounce, reflecting the United States&rsquo; postwar stockpile and economic strength. When President Richard Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, the system shifted to pure fiat.
As Giustra puts it, the message became: &ldquo;Trust us &mdash; our economy&rsquo;s strong, and our money&rsquo;s as good as gold.&rdquo; The petrodollar system, meanwhile, kept the dollar on top.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The first serious challenge emerged in 2002, when China launched the Shanghai Gold Exchange. It introduced something missing from Western markets: mandatory physical delivery.
While Giustra estimates around 95% of trades on COMEX are paper contracts, Shanghai required real bullion to change hands, at least domestically.
But China went further in 2014 with the Shanghai International Gold Exchange, allowing foreign participants to trade gold in yuan rather than dollars. In 2016, it introduced the Shanghai Gold Benchmark Price, a daily yuan-denominated auction. For the first time in a century, London had a serious counterpart.
Global events amplified the shift. The 2008 financial crisis exposed the fragility of leverage and monetary expansion. COVID-era stimulus accelerated it. Then, in 2022, the freezing of Russian reserves forced other nations to ask, as Giustra observes: &ldquo;What if we&rsquo;re next?&rdquo; Central banks responded by buying physical gold and reducing reliance on dollar assets.
The result has been a slow rebalancing. &ldquo;The Shanghai Gold Exchange won&rsquo;t replace COMEX or LBMA overnight,&rdquo; Giustra says, &ldquo;and the dollar won&rsquo;t vanish tomorrow.&rdquo; Still, every trade settled in yuan and every bar vaulted outside Western control marks a subtle transfer of power.
Giustra is a long-time power broker in mining and metals; he&rsquo;s been around these markets long enough to recognize structural change when he sees it. If gold is quietly reclaiming its role as real money, Shanghai &mdash; not London or New York &mdash; may be the future.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />&ldquo;AI Tax&rdquo; (Not What You Think)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> A study of 5,000 white-collar workers by the AI consulting firm Section finds a striking disconnect between executives and employees when using the AI tools. 
Two-thirds of nonmanagement employees respond AI saves them less than two hours per week &mdash; or no time at all. More than 40% of executives, meanwhile, report saving over eight hours a week.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5J0IyuaOEoZcSlybrelDl7/b2d3b1ce6d7914a4a5b7a4a642aa3dbc/FMF-Issue-01-22-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Section, Stephanie Stamm, Wall Street Journal
&ldquo;Executives automatically assume AI is going to be the savior,&rdquo; says Steve McGarvey, a user-experience designer in Raleigh, N.C. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t count the number of times that I&rsquo;ve sought a solution for a problem, asked an LLM and it gave me a solution [that] was completely wrong.&rdquo;
McGarvey says AI helps with research &mdash; but only if you already know enough to spot when it&rsquo;s wrong. &ldquo;Unless you have some judgment or discernment in the field you&rsquo;re in,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;you could really do harm.&rdquo;
That friction has a cost. A report from Workday calls it an &ldquo;AI tax&rdquo; on productivity: time saved, then quietly spent correcting errors. Even at the top, the payoff remains elusive. In a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey presented at Davos, just 12% of CEOs say AI delivered both cost savings and revenue gains.
But some companies have already tested AI&rsquo;s limits. And then re-tested. Klarna replaced hundreds of customer-service agents with AI &mdash; then rehired humans for harder questions. Duolingo said AI would replace contractors, then ended 2024 with a 14% larger staff.
Bottom line: Workers aren&rsquo;t impressed. To wit, 40% of respondents say they&rsquo;d be fine never using AI again.
[At the Paradigm app&rsquo;s Daily Feed, our managing editor Dave Gonigam commented on this story: &ldquo;Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Dilbert creator Scott Adams is having a hearty laugh.&rdquo;
Haven&rsquo;t downloaded the app yet? Join thousands of your fellow Paradigm subscribers at the instructions <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">right here.</a>]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Trump 2.0
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Better off,&rdquo; a longtime reader responds to Trump&rsquo;s assessment. &ldquo;Over the last three years, as octogenarians, we assiduously eliminated all debt, including the home equity loan.
&ldquo;Then we sold municipals and converted to energy and miners with reinvested dividends. We are steadily adding to our net worth every month. We feel more secure now than we did one&ndash;three years ago. Guidance from Paradigm has been a great help.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I am financially worse off,&rdquo; says another contributor. &ldquo;As a retiree, the rising costs of food, Medicare and onerous taxes are hurting me. 
&ldquo;I am totally irritated that the Social Security miserly increases are completely wiped out just by the increases in Medicare costs. But the real kicker to me is the money in both Social Security and Medicare is MY money.
&ldquo;I worked for 40 years, made over six figures and maxed out my 401(k) yearly. I should be living comfortably, but I have to pull from my retirement monthly just to stay in my home. We've given up eating out, vacations, concerts and theater.
&ldquo;I understand how policies Trump is working to institute will help our country; it just may be too late for me.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Has the Trump 2.0 administration made me better off than I was a year ago?&rdquo; adds our final correspondent today.
&ldquo;Financially, yes. But only because his immigration policy has opened up thousands of jobs in
detention operations. A new detention facility opened up in my state, and I was able get a
job that pays 50% more under a federal contract than what I was making in the same position
working in a state-run prison. Not everyone is so fortunate.
&ldquo;As for his economic policies, I agree that capping interest rates is a VERY BAD idea. The jury is
still out on all of his tariffs, and will be for some time. I remain optimistic that the long-term
gain will be worth the (hopefully) short-term pain.
&ldquo;Of course, the above goes out the window if his foreign policy gets us all incinerated.&rdquo;
Thanks to everyone who took the time to write in &mdash; the notes, stories and perspectives are genuinely appreciated.
More soon&hellip; And thanks for being part of the 5 Bullets family!

FMF-Issue-01-22-26(Featured)

Main Character Monetary Policy

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" /> Markets love a villain.
This week&rsquo;s villain, according to the mainstream narrative, is Greenland &mdash; or rather, the idea that the U.S. administration&rsquo;s trade posture is spooking global investors. That story is neat, politically satisfying&hellip; but wrong?
Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said something revealing &mdash; and far less convenient &mdash; when asked about the sudden volatility in global markets.
<blockquote>The Japanese bond market had a six-standard deviation move for the past two days. That would be in their 10-year bonds. I&rsquo;ve been in touch with my economic counterparts in Japan, and urged them to take the necessary measures to stabilize their bond market. </blockquote>
<blockquote>But that&rsquo;s spilling over into all bond markets. German yields are up. French yields are up. U.S. yields are up. Again, it&rsquo;s mostly the Japanese bond market. It&rsquo;s got nothing to do with Greenland.</blockquote>
Of course, Bessent is speaking in the administration&rsquo;s self-interest. But what if he&rsquo;s right?
To understand why he might be, you have to look past headlines and into the scaffolding of global markets &mdash; specifically, the quiet role Japan has played in financing risk around the world.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;For years, global markets have been floating on something they barely talk about,&rdquo; writes Sean Ring, editor of The Rude Awakening. &ldquo;No, not earnings. Or productivity. Try this: cheap yen.&rdquo;
For decades after Japan&rsquo;s 1989 stock market collapse, the Bank of Japan held interest rates near zero, turning the yen into the world&rsquo;s cheapest and most predictable source of borrowing.
Global investors borrowed yen, converted it into other currencies including dollars and euros and invested in higher-return assets abroad.
The power of this yen carry trade was the cheap, steady funding behind it. As long as borrowing costs stayed low and stable, the trade worked.
But that stability is now under strain.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Recently, Japan&rsquo;s 10-year government bond yield has surged to 2.34% &mdash; a level not seen in over 25 years.
&ldquo;To Americans used to 4&ndash;5% Treasuries, [that] might not sound dramatic,&rdquo; Sean adds, &ldquo;but in Japan it&rsquo;s seismic.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1c5JZrjMsi028vw7xk6bss/a3f9c218fb290e1acf3358202a0fb225/FMF-Issue-01-21-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Sean: &ldquo;This is not the gold chart. It&rsquo;s the Japanese 10-year yield.&rdquo;
Japan carries public debt well north of 250% of GDP. Its fiscal system functions because interest costs have long been suppressed. But when yields rise, markets start asking questions that haven&rsquo;t mattered in years.
&ldquo;Borrowing in yen is no longer free,&rdquo; Sean writes. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s worse is that it&rsquo;s no longer predictable.&rdquo; That uncertainty is lethal to leveraged trades.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Complicating matters further, Japan is dealing with a weak yen. 
Higher bond yields usually strengthen a country&rsquo;s currency. But despite rising yields, the yen remains historically weak as markets weigh Japan&rsquo;s shifting fiscal policy.&nbsp;
Notably, the yen carry trade relies on thin margins. Investors borrow cheaply in one currency and invest elsewhere, assuming exchange rates won&rsquo;t move sharply against them. The real risk isn&rsquo;t that the yen stays weak &mdash; it&rsquo;s that it suddenly strengthens.
If that happens, borrowing costs jump immediately. Losses appear quickly. Brokers issue margin calls, demanding fresh cash or collateral to offset losses. Positions are closed under pressure.
When carry trades unwind? &ldquo;They die,&rdquo; Sean says. &ldquo;Violently.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> An unwind of the yen carry trade spreads far beyond Japan. It shows up in portfolios everywhere. Estimates of yen carry trade exposure run into the trillions of dollars; even a partial unwind can move markets fast.
And the sequence of events follows a typical pattern:
<ul>
<li>Japanese bond volatility spikes</li>
<li>Funding assumptions break</li>
<li>And leveraged traders face margin pressure.</li>
</ul>
They sell whatever they can &mdash; not because something is wrong with those assets, but because those assets are liquid. &ldquo;U.S. equities&hellip; Emerging-market ETFs&hellip; Crypto,&rdquo; Sean says. &ldquo;They just happen to be the piggy bank.&rdquo;
This is why these episodes seem arbitrary. &ldquo;Earnings didn&rsquo;t collapse. Consumers didn&rsquo;t suddenly stop spending.&rdquo; Instead, a hidden spigot quietly turns off.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The 2024 Warning Shot
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If this all feels familiar, it should. In the summer of 2024, global markets seized up after a Bank of Japan rate hike &mdash; and, more importantly, signals that more tightening could follow.
After a quarter century of near-zero rates, many investors had built portfolios on the assumption that yen funding would always be available. When that assumption wobbled, assets around the world were sold to close positions.
As our managing editor Dave Gonigam wrote in the aftermath, the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/apology-from-tokyo">subtext from Tokyo</a> was essentially: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re really sorry about screwing up global markets for three days.&rdquo;
The Wall Street Journal that day: &ldquo;A week after Japan&rsquo;s top central banker shook up global markets with comments about raising interest rates, one of his deputies walked them back [and] promised not to raise rates when markets are unstable.&rdquo;
That reassurance worked. Selling pressure eased. Markets stabilized. What didn&rsquo;t change was the underlying dependence on cheap yen funding.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This isn&rsquo;t about Japan &ldquo;screwing up&rdquo; the world. &ldquo;Japan is the match, not the gasoline,&rdquo; says Sean.
&ldquo;The gasoline is global leverage built on cheap funding&rdquo; in a market already &ldquo;priced for perfection,&rdquo; Sean says wryly &mdash; where assets are expensive, the reward for taking risk is thin and many investors are crowded into the same trades.
&ldquo;Wall Street,&rdquo; Sean concludes, &ldquo;never prices this stuff in until it has to.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s why Bessent&rsquo;s comment matters. If this volatility were truly about Greenland or tariffs, you&rsquo;d expect a contained reaction.
What we&rsquo;re seeing instead is broader stress &mdash; the signature of funding problems, not trade headlines.
When the quiet engines that support risk assets start to sputter, markets test them. Hard. That doesn&rsquo;t mean collapse is imminent. It does mean a hidden support beam is cracking.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The U.S. stock market&rsquo;s in recovery mode today. The three major indexes have flipped to green, with the Dow up 0.60% to 48,785&hellip; the S&amp;P 500 up 0.50% to 6,830&hellip; and the tech-heavy Nasdaq up 0.35% to 23,035. (As we understand it, Trump says U.S. military intervention in Greenland is off the table.)
For the most part, commodities are likewise in green territory. The price of oil&rsquo;s up 0.65% to $60.75 for a barrel of West Texas crude. At the same time, gold&rsquo;s marching higher: up 1.65% to $4,845.70 per ounce. Silver, on the other hand, has pulled back 1.60%, but still above $93.
The crypto market, however, is getting clobbered. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 1.35% to $88,300 while Ethereum&rsquo;s slipped 2.50% to $2,920.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />China&rsquo;s Cold Reality
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> China can build all the solar panels it wants. But the country still runs on coal.
In 2024, coal supplied about 60% of China&rsquo;s primary energy, with oil around 20% and natural gas around 9&ndash;10%, according to the IEA and EIA.
<ul>
<li>China&rsquo;s dependence on coal is not merely large &mdash; it&rsquo;s historically unprecedented. The country now burns about 56% of all coal consumed globally, roughly twenty times the combined usage of the European Union</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Since 2000, China has tripled its coal consumption. The increase alone over that period is eight times larger than total U.S. coal use today.</li>
</ul>
Whatever China&rsquo;s climate ambitions may be, its energy system remains overwhelmingly carbon-intensive.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And yet Western media coverage routinely portrays China as a climate leader. 
This tendency has intensified since Donald Trump returned to the White House, as comparisons between U.S. rhetoric and Chinese industrial policy have become a narrative device.
In late September, for instance, major media outlets framed China&rsquo;s incremental climate gestures as meaningful progress &ldquo;next to Trump&rsquo;s retreat.&rdquo; Early this month, Foreign Policy went further, asking whether China could &ldquo;replace an absent America in the climate fight.&rdquo;
One passage from that article neatly captures the prevailing view: Chinese officials, it argues, &ldquo;never bought the argument that emissions reductions would cause economic harm,&rdquo; instead embracing clean technology as a defining industry of the 21st century.
The problem is not that this statement is false. It&rsquo;s that it&rsquo;s incomplete to the point of being misleading. Chinese officials never feared economic damage from emissions reductions &mdash; because they have never meaningfully reduced emissions.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/bBNBsbxjAE0Mw6OdhIUH7/fe9c51cb87f477254c0dfb7f867fba09/FMF-Issue-01-21-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Statistical Review of World Energy, Doomberg
On the contrary, China has continued expanding coal production, approving new coal plants and increasing total fossil-fuel consumption even as it dominates global manufacturing of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines.
The confusion deepened in October, when the British think tank Ember released its midyear review of global electricity trends. Headlines quickly followed, proclaiming that renewables had overtaken coal in global power generation and that China&rsquo;s &ldquo;clean energy growth&rdquo; was driving an irreversible transition.
But Ember&rsquo;s claims apply narrowly to electricity generation, not total energy use &mdash; and only over a six-month window. Coal remains indispensable to China&rsquo;s industrial economy, heavy manufacturing, steelmaking and chemical production. Electricity statistics do not capture those realities.
China is building renewables at scale. It is also burning more coal than the rest of the world combined. Both can be true at the same time &mdash; and they are.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Quiet Luxury?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> First-class is supposed to be the airline&rsquo;s show pony &mdash; the partitioned place where things are more refined and faintly aspirational.
Which is why the meal shared by X user and imaging scientist Peyman Milanfar didn&rsquo;t land. Flying first-class on United Airlines, Milanfar posted a photo of what was described as a &ldquo;salad.&rdquo;
The bowl was full &mdash; no shrinkflation here &mdash; but the contents were gravely unappetizing&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5LisCYig63cLBwKsZI6Pug/911d8872702112eb129ca84ab141ffdd/FMF-Issue-01-21-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
In an era of higher fares, airline food has become emblematic &mdash; a reminder that paying more no longer guarantees better. Starting with the meal.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Trump&rsquo;s Report Card
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Reading The 5 had me recapping 2025. It&rsquo;s been a mixed bag for me,&rdquo; says our first contributor today.
&ldquo;Bad:
<ul>
<li>I work for a government contractor. DOGE activities resulted in many cancelled contracts, and the company laid off 20% of its workforce</li>
<li>Despite the above, the government is still spending way more than it receives in revenues</li>
<li>Lots of large pendulum swings with markets</li>
<li>Where is the accountability for the sins of the past?</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Good:
<ul>
<li>Lower taxes</li>
<li>Enforcement of immigration laws</li>
<li>Lower gasoline prices (not so much with anything else, though).</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Generally, I have been OK financially because I got lucky and avoided the layoff ax, but it was close. I just don&rsquo;t understand how DOGE caused all that uproar yet the government is still spending like a drunken sailor.
&ldquo;People in the U.S. have to suffer immensely, I guess, before they actually vote out the fraudsters in Congress.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;A high-energy, business-savvy patriot without career political baggage has replaced a ruinous puppet as leader of the free world,&rdquo; writes an optimistic contributor.
&ldquo;America's future &mdash; including AI and reshoring &mdash; appears unprecedentedly bright, despite China, Russia and Iran. Investing in Rickards&rsquo; opportunities has proven very beneficial.&rdquo;
We love hearing that Rickards&rsquo; trades have made a measurable difference! And we&rsquo;re thrilled by the volume of your replies, grading Trump&rsquo;s presidency, one year into his second term.
If you didn&rsquo;t get a chance to write in, feel free &mdash; <a href="mailto:feedback@paradigmpressroom.com">the inbox is always open.</a>

FMF-Issue-01-21-26(Featured)

Markets Love a Villain

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Price Cap Trap
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />President Trump has a knack for putting his finger on real pain points &mdash; and then setting off alarms across the financial system. His latest idea does both. 
More than a week ago, Trump called for a one-year cap on credit-card interest rates at 10%, starting today, Jan. 20.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6vzZOTRJVj17RQLmuKnuMh/d7a6063cd803342f68454dab64cb9f58/FMF-Issue-01-20-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
(As of now, the 10% cap remains a proposal and political initiative &mdash; not a binding policy or law.)
The idea seems straightforward: With Americans squeezed by high borrowing costs, Washington should step in and force relief. With many credit cards charging interest rates well above 20%, the proposal hits a cost-of-living nerve.
For its part, the banking industry responded immediately &mdash; and forcefully.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Financial institutions warn that a hard cap would not simply lower rates. It would dramatically shrink access to credit.
The Electronic Payments Coalition (EPC), which represents banks and payment networks, says that under a 10% cap, credit cards would become economically unviable for most borrowers outside the top tier.
According to the group's analysis, accounts tied to credit scores below 740 &mdash; around 82&ndash;88% of all open credit-card accounts &mdash; would likely be closed or severely restricted.
&ldquo;A one-size-fits-all government price cap may sound appealing,&rdquo; EPC Executive Chairman Richard Hunt says, &ldquo;but it wouldn't help Americans &mdash; it would do the exact opposite, harming families, limiting opportunity and weakening our economy.&rdquo;
That claim sounds self-serving, but the mechanics behind it are real.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Credit cards are unsecured loans. There's no collateral backing them.
The interest rate compensates lenders for default risk, fraud and the reality that many cardholders revolve balances for long periods while making only minimum payments.
Credit card APRs hit 25.2% in 2024 &mdash; the highest since 2015, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And more cardholders are making only minimum payments, a sign that households are stretched thin and lenders are getting nervous.
Trump's argument is that a rate cap would reverse that dynamic &mdash; lowering costs for consumers, boosting spending and improving affordability.
But Paradigm's macro expert Jim Rickards says history offers a blunt warning.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;In 1980, during the last year of Jimmy Carter's presidency, inflation and interest rates seemed out of control,&rdquo; Jim explains.
&ldquo;Inflation had been building since the late 1960s, but in 1980 it reached 13.5%&hellip; Interest rates reached an almost record high of 20%.
&ldquo;On March 14, 1980, seven months before the election, Carter announced the authorization of credit controls,&rdquo; Jim says.
The theory was simple: restrict borrowing, cool demand, bring inflation down. The result was the opposite.
&ldquo;The policy was a complete economic failure,&rdquo; Jim notes. &ldquo;New credit card issuance stopped, and credit lines were capped.&rdquo;
The economic fallout was swift. GDP plunged 8.5% in three months. Unemployment spiked from 6.2% to 7.8% by May.
By mid-1980, the controls were lifted. But the damage was done. A recession was already underway, and Carter went on to lose the November election in a landslide.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Donald Trump is now using a similar tactic to fight the 'affordability crisis' and to tame inflation,&rdquo; Jim continues.
&ldquo;That's not how credit works. The banks will simply cut off creditors, reduce credit lines and stop issuing new cards to consumers with lower credit ratings.&rdquo;
That outcome is exactly what lenders are signaling today.
A study from Vanderbilt University's Policy Accelerator, meanwhile, estimates that a 10% cap could save Americans roughly $100 billion annually in interest costs.
&ldquo;The profit margins are absolutely massive,&rdquo; argues Vanderbilt's Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy. &ldquo;There really is some fat to cut.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Credit card rates are predatory. And price controls backfire. Both things can be true at once. 
The question isn't whether Americans are getting squeezed; they are. It's whether Trump's solution makes things worse.
The affordability crisis is real. The risk is that a policy designed to ease it ends up tightening credit, slowing spending and recreating the very economic stress it aims to relieve &mdash; just as it did more than four decades ago.
Jim concludes: &ldquo;If Trump's idea goes through, put on your crash helmet because the economy will head down fast.&rdquo;
The question now is whether Washington is about to make the same mistake twice, and whether voters will remember who was at the wheel when the economy stalls.
[Today marks one year since Trump&rsquo;s inauguration.
If you were keeping a personal scorecard &mdash; wins and losses, promises kept and broken &mdash; are you better off today than you were a year ago?
Financially, professionally or in terms of opportunity: What&rsquo;s changed for you? <a href="mailto:feedback@paradigmpressroom.com">Hit reply</a> and tell us where you stand. We&rsquo;ll publish feedback throughout the week.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Big MAC Trade
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The market already has a name for what&rsquo;s unfolding in Washington. As our pro trader Enrique Abeyta explains, economist Claudia Sahm has dubbed it the &ldquo;Big MAC Trade&rdquo; &mdash; a recognition that midterms are coming.
&ldquo;With each new week, we seem to get another policy announcement aimed at affordability to win over voters,&rdquo; Enrique adds. The goal is straightforward: &ldquo;The Trump administration has one objective for the year, and that&rsquo;s winning the midterm elections.&rdquo;
Seen through that lens: &ldquo;A one-year cap on credit-card interest rates makes little sense as serious economic reform,&rdquo; Enrique argues. &ldquo;If such a cap were truly beneficial and sustainable, it wouldn&rsquo;t be temporary.
&ldquo;The one-year duration lines up neatly with the election calendar, not with economic logic.&rdquo;
But markets didn&rsquo;t wait to parse those nuances. &ldquo;Stocks of global payment and credit giants like Visa sold off sharply as investors rushed to price in worst-case scenarios.&rdquo; In hours, a proposal with no legislative footing translated into billions in erased market value.
This is when experience matters.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Markets don&rsquo;t wait for legislation to pass. They trade expectations, probabilities and fear,&rdquo; Enrique reminds readers. Election-year politics, in particular, tend to amplify that behavior.
For investors, the Big MAC Trade isn&rsquo;t about dismissing risk &mdash; it&rsquo;s about properly sizing it. &ldquo;Understanding the political motivation behind it helps investors assess whether a sell-off reflects real long-term risk or temporary uncertainty.&rdquo;
As midterms approach, Enrique expects affordability headlines &mdash; and volatility &mdash; to keep coming. That creates opportunity for those willing to look past the headlines and focus on fundamentals.
&ldquo;Election-year politics may be noisy,&rdquo; Enrique concludes. &ldquo;But noise creates movement, and movement creates opportunity.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And just like that, stocks are in free fall today. According to financial media outlets, Trump&rsquo;s Greenland and fresh tariff threats are culprits for the sell-off.
Regardless, the tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 1.60% to 23,133 and the S&amp;P 500 and Dow are down 90 and 590 points to 6,840 and 48,765 respectively.
Predictably, commodities are climbing. Oil&rsquo;s up 2% to $60.62 for a barrel of WTI. And precious metals are shining: Gold&rsquo;s up 3.50% to $4,758.50 per ounce; silver, meanwhile, is up 6.30% to $94.10.
<a id="3"></a>
Crypto, however, is not the safety play today. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 3.30%, just around $90K. And Ethereum&rsquo;s lost a punishing 7%, just under $3K.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Fed Foibles Push China Away?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />China continues to pull back from U.S. government debt &mdash; and the move reflects more than routine portfolio adjustments.
According to U.S. Treasury Department data released this week, China reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries to $682.6 billion in November, down from $688.7 billion in October. That marks the lowest level since September 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis.
Measured against January 2025, China&rsquo;s U.S. Treasury holdings are now nearly 10% lower, according to calculations by financial data provider Wind.
The decline is the latest step in a long, uneven retreat that began during Donald Trump&rsquo;s first term. In March, notably, China slipped to third place among foreign holders of U.S. Treasuries, behind Japan and the U.K.
Shao Yu, chief economist at Fudan University, argues that China increasingly views the structure of U.S. borrowing itself as unsustainable. &ldquo;The massive accumulation of [U.S.] debt resembles a Ponzi scheme, where larger volumes of new debt are used to replace the old,&rdquo; Shao says.
&ldquo;China doesn&rsquo;t want to play this game anymore.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />China&rsquo;s skepticism has been reinforced by growing uncertainty around U.S. monetary policy, according to an article at the South China Morning Post. 
The supposed independence of the Federal Reserve has been openly questioned during Trump&rsquo;s presidency with tensions escalating with Fed Chair Jerome Powell&rsquo;s revelation that the administration launched a criminal investigation into him.
Powell believes the probe stems from his refusal to set interest rates in line with the president&rsquo;s preferences; Trump denies any knowledge of the investigation. Whatever the case may be, Powell&rsquo;s chairmanship expires in May.
Shao expects that uncertainty to shape Beijing&rsquo;s decisions going forward. &ldquo;[Trump&rsquo;s] appointee will undoubtedly be more compliant,&rdquo; he says.
&ldquo;This implies that, in line with Trump&rsquo;s directives, there may be a push for rapid interest rate cuts and the initiation of large-scale quantitative easing to support infrastructure, including the artificial intelligence bubble.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Rather than exiting global markets altogether, China appears to be rebalancing its reserves. Beijing is shifting assets toward gold, non-U.S. currencies and overseas equity investments.
China added 30,000 ounces of gold in December, extending its buying streak to 14 consecutive months and bringing total reserves to 74.15 million ounces, according to official figures.
It&rsquo;s also worth mentioning that China&rsquo;s pullback stands in sharp contrast to the behavior of other major investors.
Total foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries rose to a record $9.36 trillion in November, up from $9.24 trillion in October. Japan and the United Kingdom &mdash; the two largest foreign holders &mdash; both increased their positions, as did Belgium and Canada.
While global investors still see U.S. debt as indispensable, Beijing is no longer willing to anchor its reserves to a system it increasingly views as politically unstable and fiscally unsustainable.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Friday Follow-up: Silver
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />When silver moves faster than the U.S. Mint&rsquo;s pricing software, you&rsquo;re no longer in a normal market. This wasn&rsquo;t just <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/teslas-loss-your-gain#4">a website glitch.</a> It was a market shock catching the government flat-footed.
When the Mint did come back online at <a href="https://www.usmint.gov/coins/silver-coins/?start=0&amp;sz=28">sharply higher premiums&hellip;</a>
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4wXDZqtNWk44TF6BLqU1AD/f3db459921a3124fd71f29e0a535030d/FMF-Issue-01-20-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&hellip; that&rsquo;s your confirmation that physical demand has pulled retail pricing out of sync.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />O&rsquo;Hare Tests Limits of Naming Rights
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Chicago officials are floating the idea of selling naming rights across O&rsquo;Hare airport &mdash; not just to terminals or concourses. Restrooms. Pet relief areas. Elevators. EV chargers. Trash cans. If it exists within the airport ecosystem, it&rsquo;s apparently brandable.
And O&rsquo;Hare needs new satellite concourses and a rebuilt global terminal, but public infrastructure costs real money. If a company &mdash; or individual &mdash; wants to slap its name on a water fountain to help pay for it, why not?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/71a8sptyCJvV2LTuXtKEeJ/677318b1acf675b85d01545ba1a59b9e/FMF-Issue-01-20-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
This is Chicago, after all. The same city where the Chicago Bears are flirting with a stadium relocation &mdash; to Indiana &mdash; for tax reasons.
When your 100-plus year old football team is considering crossing state lines to dodge levies, it&rsquo;s not shocking that your airport is wondering whether Gate B12 could pick up a corporate sponsor.
Of course, there are still many questions about how this all plays out in practice. And while it may raise revenue, it also sends a message. And not necessarily one the city intends.
Still, if Chicago is going down this road, it might as well lean in. Just don&rsquo;t be surprised if the loudest applause ends up going to whoever sponsors the trash cans &mdash; the only thing at O&rsquo;Hare that predictably handles volume. 
Speaking from personal experience, O&rsquo;Hare already owns the record for the longest layover of my life.
You all take care! We&rsquo;ll be back tomorrow&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-20-26(Featured)

The Price Cap Trap

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Tesla&rsquo;s Loss, Your Gain
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It might come as a surprise to most Americans&hellip; but global registrations for electric vehicles swelled by 20% last year, according to new figures from the consulting firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
EVs!? Who cares about those anymore?
To be sure, EVs have lost their cachet in the U.S. market. Sales flatlined in 2025. At year&rsquo;s end, Ford wrote down a $19.5 billion investment in EVs. General Motors, for its part, took a $6 billion hit. Tesla&rsquo;s domestic sales peaked in 2023.
<ul>
<li>In retrospect, the turning point for EVs in this country came right around this time in 2024: It was a huge news story when legions of Tesla owners in Chicago found themselves stranded and/or unable to charge their vehicles. Turns out batteries and chargers don&rsquo;t work very well during a cold snap. And it wasn&rsquo;t even that cold in the scheme of things &mdash; about 10 above.</li>
</ul>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the rest of the world, however, EVs are still hot and happening &mdash; and there&rsquo;s a lucrative investment angle that&rsquo;s not obvious on the surface.
&ldquo;Analysts from both the International Energy Agency and BloombergNEF estimate that EV sales will make up 40&ndash;50% of all vehicle sales by 2030,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s newest contributor &mdash; natural resources pro Matt Badiali. &ldquo;This industry is booming.&rdquo;
Which means battery metals are likewise booming. &ldquo;The supply/demand outlook for those metals remains strong.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;But one metal stands out as the biggest winner for investors,&rdquo; Matt tells us &mdash; &ldquo;copper.
&ldquo;Copper is the metal of electricity. Aluminum can substitute for it in some situations (like power lines). But if you want an electric motor, you have to use copper. And every EV needs electric motors.
&ldquo;In 2015, EV copper demand was 56,000 metric tons. It grew 1,650% to 1 million metric tons in 2025. That demand growth drove copper prices higher.&rdquo;
Check out this chart of the copper price going back 10 years. This week the red metal crossed over a record $6 a pound&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4VjzK3vBP2BpWoOD8YHGfF/f2fd97e04fbafa42a51877cf0d97fc07/5Bullets_ChartTemplate_0116.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Don&rsquo;t get the wrong idea: &ldquo;This trend will continue for the next five years, at least,&rdquo; Matt says.
&ldquo;The Copper Development Association forecasts copper demand for EVs to hit 2.5 million metric tons by 2030. Analysts at JP Morgan expect a deficit of 330,000 metric tons in 2026.
&ldquo;This trend will get a further boost by demand from AI datacenters. The sudden boom in electricity and batteries will further impact copper prices. There is no substitute for copper in many electrical uses.&rdquo;
As we mentioned only yesterday, Amazon has signed a deal with Rio Tinto for exclusive access to the copper coming from a mine in Arizona that came into operation last year. It&rsquo;s the first such deal &mdash; but it won&rsquo;t be the last.
How to play the trend? Matt likes the Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX).
&ldquo;Owning a basket of these miners reduces common risks from individual companies,&rdquo; he says.
&ldquo;For most portfolios, a position in COPX is the perfect exposure to the copper market.&rdquo; [Dave&rsquo;s disclosure: I&rsquo;ve been steadily building a position in COPX since 2021.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Not Just Tech Anymore
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s no longer technology pulling the stock market train here in early 2026.
On the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app, trading pro Enrique Abeyta draws our attention to an intriguing stat from Turning Point Market Research.
Every one of the S&amp;P 500&rsquo;s 11 sectors now sits above its 200-day moving average. That&rsquo;s everything from information technology to financials to utilities.
&ldquo;Since 1928,&rdquo; Enrique says, &ldquo;the S&amp;P 500 has delivered an annualized return of 11.5% once this happens.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Another tailwind for stocks &mdash; a peaceful bond market.
Just as the VIX measures volatility in stocks, the MOVE index measures volatility in bonds. The MOVE index has been falling steadily ever since the &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; scare last April.
Key point: &ldquo;When the MOVE index is high (or going higher), stocks struggle,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;When it collapses, stocks &mdash; especially small stocks &mdash; can soar.&rdquo;
The MOVE now sits at lows last seen in 2021. &ldquo;Bullish for small caps across the board.&rdquo;
Intriguing, no?
This is your friendly reminder that the Paradigm Press mobile app delivers access to market insights like these that you won&rsquo;t find anywhere else. Better yet, it gives you clean, easy-to-navigate access to all of your paid publications without sifting through a cluttered email inbox. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download the app right here and see for yourself</a>.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As the week winds down, watching the major U.S. stock indexes is like watching paint dry.
None of the averages has budged more than a tenth of a percent as we write. At 6,949 the S&amp;P 500 rests about 28 points below Monday&rsquo;s record close.
Gold has slipped below $4,600 for the moment and silver is getting a much-needed reset &mdash; down $3.62 at last check to $88.73. (More about silver momentarily&hellip;)
Not much change in crypto compared with 24 hours ago &mdash; Bitcoin just under $95,000 and Ethereum below $3,300.
The lone economic number of interest today is industrial production &mdash; up 0.4% in December, according to the Federal Reserve. All told, 76.3% of America&rsquo;s industrial capacity was in use last month &mdash; slightly better than a year earlier, but well below the long-term average.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Wars and Rumors of Wars
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Oil prices are back on the rise as new rumors swirl about a U.S. attack on Iran.
When we left you yesterday, it seemed as if Donald Trump was satisfied that Iran&rsquo;s crackdown on protesters was over and he was not inclined to launch a follow-up attack to the one he launched last summer. The oil price tumbled over 4% as a consequence.
Rumors abounded that an attack was imminent on Wednesday night. The much-followed &ldquo;OSINTdefender&rdquo; account on X claimed there were possible explosions in Tehran &mdash; and then the post was deleted because &ldquo;the source appear to be a bit flimsy [sic].&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s possible an attack was called off at the last minute, for reasons still unknown.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2V384y342ARlUvejFQaRoY/a4e01c12ecd6518ceefc569962401391/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_2_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
But as our favorite political reporter Michael Tracey reminds us, Trump pulled a feint just before last summer&rsquo;s airstrikes&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1Tn9begpgBTNOT01VsnSWT/df9dbc7908bbb09e41f5cc18879daac3/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_3_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<a id="4"></a>
Amid that backdrop, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up over 1% on the day &mdash; back within 15 cents of $60.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Discounted Silver! (For a Few Seconds&hellip;)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The action in silver this week is so wild that for a brief time, the U.S. Mint was selling it at a discount.
On Wednesday, the spot price of silver sailed toward $93 an ounce &mdash; which was problematic because the Mint was charging $91 for uncirculated U.S. Silver Eagles.
Evidently the Mint is such a slow-moving beast that rather than adjust the price higher, it simply pulled its silver offerings off its website.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5GmWzpW9XuQEkT45JPqWgG/14048555a5a53ba642679aee28e682fb/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_4_.jpg" alt="pub" width="313px" />
&ldquo;Due to rapidly rising metal costs, silver numismatic (collectible) products have been temporarily removed from sale as we evaluate pricing across our entire numismatic portfolio,&rdquo; a notice explains.
&ldquo;Products will be placed back on sale as soon as prices are adjusted. American Eagle Silver bullion coins remain available for purchase through our network of authorized purchasers.&rdquo;
Is it that hard to adjust the prices on the website? Or has the Mint&rsquo;s inventory been cleaned out?
&ldquo;The U.S. Mint has suspended silver sales before, but those suspensions were attributed to inventory shortages and supply chain disruptions, not to rising bullion prices,&rdquo; writes one Stuart Englert on his Substack page.
&ldquo;Between 2008 and 2010, extreme demand forced the U.S. Mint to ration and temporarily suspended sales of American Silver Eagles several times due to a shortage of blanks to make the bullion coins. At the time, some industry observers attributed the shortages to kinks in the supply chain or a manufacturing bottleneck.&rdquo;
Ditto in 2020 amid the pandemic disruptions.
Silver Eagles are still available at most online dealers at the usual markup. Nothing at Costco, though&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />You&rsquo;ve Got to Be Kidding&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Apparently this is how management at CBS News thinks they can revive their brand&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/zj4n4wCI6PCzDYiuKM8pQ/5d195ec3dd701e4edb67d8494761eebc/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_5_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4NsFLVUicCvDuXZwxKhd8n/5463d365c46be62c8fd7f65bcd275e6d/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_6_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> What were they thinking!? [CBS mockups posted by Zeteo News]
So we should back up a bit: Last year, CBS parent Paramount came under the control of nepo-baby David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The younger Ellison hired free-speech hypocrite Bari Weiss to try to make CBS News relevant again.
So far, it&rsquo;s not working.
For instance, Weiss&rsquo; interview with Charlie Kirk&rsquo;s widow Erika last month garnered a measly 72,000 views on YouTube after two days. On TV, viewership totaled about 1.5 million &mdash; a fraction of the audience that watched the Army-Navy football game beforehand.
Meanwhile, viewership of the CBS Evening News under Weiss-appointed anchor Tony Dokoupil is down 23% compared with already-pitiful levels a year ago &mdash; when Norah <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2019/07/11/noron-earns-her-big-reward-what-about-you/">&ldquo;Noron&rdquo;</a> O&rsquo;Donnell was still at the desk.
<ul>
<li>Sidebar: As you might know, your editor worked 20 years in broadcast news until walking away from the racket in 2007. The trade has become so irrelevant, so inconsequential to public discourse, that I&rsquo;d never even heard of Tony Dokoupil until maybe 18 months ago.</li>
</ul>
And so Weiss or one of her minions thought it would be a good idea to spice up the network&rsquo;s flagship newscast with a segment called &ldquo;Whiskey Fridays With Tony Dokoupil.&rdquo;
"Some staff were only first made aware of it as they encountered CBS testing set designs of a faux-stocked bar in the newsroom, featuring a large sponsor banner for Jack Daniel&rsquo;s," tweets reporter Prem Thakker of the Zeteo News site.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The humiliation was such that CBS went into instant damage-control mode: It&rsquo;s just a concept!
"This is not a segment for broadcast. This is not a real title. This is not a real sponsor. And this is not a real story,&rdquo; says a CBS statement to People magazine. &ldquo;This is simply an experimental mockup the graphics team created with placeholder text for a potential non-televised, in-person private event.&rdquo;
Uh-huh.
Having been unwittingly dragged into the fray, Jack Daniel&rsquo;s parent Brown-Forman had to issue its own statement: &ldquo;Jack Daniel&rsquo;s is not involved in any such segment, nor do we have any awareness of the segment and any potential partnerships or sponsorships.&rdquo;
As one wag on X put it, &ldquo;Amazing that even Jack Daniel&rsquo;s was like, &lsquo;Do not involve us in this dork s***.&rsquo;&rdquo;
The fiasco is especially amusing to us here at Paradigm &mdash; where for 20 years we&rsquo;ve conducted rollicking panel discussions under the name &ldquo;Whiskey Bar,&rdquo; both at in-person conferences and online.
And they&rsquo;ve gone over with audiences way better than anything out of CBS News lately&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-16-26(Featured)

Tesla’s Loss, Your Gain

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />After 25 Years of Locked Doors, A Door Opens
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Sorry if the last three days of these 5 Bullets have been a downer &mdash; everything about how the American Dream has been locked away for more and more Americans over the last 25 years and how we got here.
Today we hope to make it up to you.
We&rsquo;re coming to you a bit later than usual because moments ago Jim Rickards wrapped up our exclusive event titled &ldquo;The American Dream Unlocked.&rdquo; <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2504902">(You can watch the replay right here if you missed it.)</a>
He introduced them to the newest member of the Paradigm team, Matt Badiali &mdash; aka &ldquo;the CEO.&rdquo;
We call him that because he was chief executive officer of a company that made a lot of its shareholders rich last year.
He took his mining company public several years ago. Then last August he brokered a deal to grow his company&rsquo;s operations &mdash; acquiring a firm called Silverco Mining. This deal unlocked a huge 608% peak gain for its shareholders in only two months.
That&rsquo;s only one achievement of many across a 20-plus year career in the mining and energy sector as an executive, analyst and consultant.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now in 2026, Matt has spotted an opportunity that could be as lucrative as anything that came out of the natural resource boom during the 2000s.
If you don&rsquo;t recall that episode, &ldquo;it was epic,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I personally know a lot of people who simply retired after that market. They made so much money that they were set for life.&rdquo;
A mere $5,000 grubstake turned into&hellip;
<ul>
<li>$130,000 in less than five years with Southern Copper</li>
<li>$320,000 in about five years with the steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs</li>
<li>$1.1 million in less than five years with Azimut, a miner of copper, nickel and lithium.</li>
</ul>
Did you miss out on those? Well, Matt sees a similar opportunity shaping up here in the 2020s &mdash; with a little-known federal agency set to make an earthshaking move before the end of the month.
Just one announcement a few days from now could unlock the American Dream for those who are bold enough to act.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m talking about an unstoppable trend that could be the biggest wealth-creation event of the decade,&rdquo; Matt says.
If your curiosity is piqued, <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2504902">once more here&rsquo;s Jim Rickards&rsquo; introduction to Matt &mdash; and the replay to our exclusive event, &ldquo;The American Dream Unlocked.&rdquo;</a>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Gee, It Took Only Two Years
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />We&rsquo;ve been screaming from the rooftops about this story for two years &mdash; and today it finally got to the front page of The Wall Street Journal.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1mTEe7gmPsspavfuMpHxqp/28594d6eaeb2b9a494b09170889fe642/FMF-Issue-01-15-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Well, you heard it here first: &ldquo;The rapid growth in internet traffic and cloud computing has led to skyrocketing energy demands for data centers,&rdquo; said our Ray Blanco in this space on Jan. 18, 2024.
By the summer of 2024 we were calling AI &ldquo;the monster that ate the power grid.&rdquo; Last year, we gave you a rare free pick in these virtual pages &mdash; Constellation Energy (CEG) &mdash; which soared 52% in less than six months. Enrique Abeyta&rsquo;s paying subscribers fared even better.
Along the way we also told you about the problems facing the nation&rsquo;s biggest grid operator &mdash; PJM, which serves 67 million people in 13 states from the mid-Atlantic to the Midwest. Its territory includes the biggest concentration of data centers in the world, &ldquo;Data Center Alley&rdquo; in northern Virginia.
Finally the WSJ is perking up: &ldquo;Rates are going up for consumers. Older power plants are going out of service faster than new ones can be built. And the grid&rsquo;s capacity is in danger of maxing out during periods of high demand, which could force PJM to call for rolling blackouts during heat waves or deep freezes to avoid damaging grid infrastructure.&rdquo;
Again, none of this is new if you keep up with these daily missives. We even warned real-time about potential blackouts specific to PJM like a Christmas Eve cold snap in 2022. (Fortunately matters did not reach a crisis level.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Here is the frustration of the affordability crisis in one chart,&rdquo; says Enrique Abeyta, with a follow-up today.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1ckC3j37idYK4E6mIecORH/c8136f8536114a7f2610e3b8c7044237/5Bullets_Chart_ChangeinElectricityPricesbySector_011526.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Residential electricity prices have risen almost +10% since 2022,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;while rates for commercial (+3%) and industrial (-2%) have gone up less or even down.&rdquo;
To be sure, not all the blame lies with AI: In some states, &ldquo;green&rdquo; mandates supporting solar and wind have also driven up power prices.
This morning brings news that the data center buildout is affecting sectors other than just technology and electricity: Amazon just signed a two-year deal for access to copper mined at an Arizona site by Rio Tinto. Last year, that mine became the first new source of U.S. copper in more than 10 years &mdash; and now Amazon&rsquo;s got dibs.
Paradigm will continue to stay on top of the story &mdash; and keep you ahead of the mainstream.
[By the way: Enrique first brought that chart to readers&rsquo; attention this morning in the &ldquo;Daily Feed&rdquo; section of the Paradigm Press mobile app.
Only the app gives you access to a host of instant insights &mdash; along with convenient one-stop-shopping for all the buy and sell alerts in your paid publications. (No more sifting through your email!) <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download here</a>.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Oil&hellip; and Iran
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The big market story today is a tumble in the oil price because peace is breaking out again in the Middle East. For the moment. Maybe.
Only two days ago, Donald Trump told anti-government protesters in Iran that &ldquo;help is on the way.&rdquo; Then last night, he seemed to reverse course &mdash; saying he&rsquo;d been told &ldquo;the killing in Iran has stopped.&rdquo;
He didn&rsquo;t say who told him, but traders are taking it as a sign that tensions are easing.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, an eye-opening Washington Post story puts the timeline of the last three weeks in an interesting new light.
&ldquo;Days before protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials notified the Iranian leadership via Russia that they would not launch strikes against Iran if Israel were not attacked first&hellip;
&ldquo;[T]he contacts reflected Israel&rsquo;s desire to avoid being perceived as escalating tensions toward Iran&hellip;&rdquo;
Hmmm&hellip; The article does not specify exactly when these contacts took place. But consider what else was going on around that time&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Dec. 29: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, urging Trump to attack Iran</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Dec. 29: Israel&rsquo;s overseas intelligence service, the Mossad, posts a message on social media in Iran&rsquo;s Farsi language: &ldquo;Go out together into the streets. The time has come.&rdquo; Mossad said pointedly its agents were already in the streets: &ldquo;We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Jan. 2: Israel&rsquo;s Channel 12 outlet reports that roughly half of politically active accounts on Israeli social media are bots, not real people &mdash; and much of the traffic amplifies messaging from Netanyahu. &ldquo;When he posts a five-minute video in Hebrew, in the first 60 seconds, most of the shares are from abroad, and [those] posts happen within about five seconds,&rdquo; said Jonathan Hasidim of the Scooper research group.</li>
</ul>
So Mossad is ginning up mobs in Iran while social media worldwide is flooded with posts urging Donald Trump &mdash; not Netanyahu &mdash; to attack Iran in defense of the protesters.
Brings to mind the old joke about &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s you and him fight.&rdquo;
But in recent days the anti-government protests have fizzled &mdash; presumably because the regime&rsquo;s opponents want to be seen as Iranian patriots and not tools of Israel and the United States.&nbsp;
And now Trump is signaling no U.S. airstrikes are imminent. Not that the U.S military is in a position to do much anyway: There isn&rsquo;t even a U.S. aircraft carrier in the region right now.
With that, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is down more than three bucks &mdash; sitting as we write a hair under $59.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Beyond oil, the other big market story is a whipsaw in silver.
The trouble began during electronic trading in New York last night, the price collapsing from over $93 to under $87. Then the white metal started clawing its way back. At last check it&rsquo;s back over $92!
Gold has looked positively calm by comparison &ndash; down modestly but still holding the line on $4,600.
It was a modestly positive day for the major U.S. indexes, the Dow up 0.6%. The S&amp;P and the Nasdaq both ended the day up a quarter percent &ndash; not enough to make up for yesterday&rsquo;s losses.
Crypto is looking stout &ndash; Bitcoin over $95,000 and Ethereum in sight of $3,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />&ldquo;Trumpcare for the Oil Industry&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Big Oil is skeptical about big money to be made in Venezuela.
Last Friday, Donald Trump met with a group of oil executives at the White House. He urged them to invest at least $100 billion in rebuilding and building out Venezuela&rsquo;s oil infrastructure.
No one stepped up with an immediate commitment &mdash; even though Venezuela sits on the world&rsquo;s biggest oil reserves and its oil is the kind that&rsquo;s tailor-made for Gulf Coast refineries. Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods called the country &ldquo;uninvestable&rdquo; because there are no &ldquo;legal and commercial frameworks.&rdquo;
Gee, it&rsquo;s almost as if Woods was urging Trump to follow through with full-on regime change; as it happens, Exxon has funded think tanks advocating exactly that.&nbsp;
"I didn't like Exxon's response,&rdquo; Trump said Sunday. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re playing too cute.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Regardless, Exxon&rsquo;s Woods merely said out loud what every other CEO in the room was thinking: What&rsquo;s the point of investing billions when leftist paramilitaries could start blowing up pipelines willy-nilly to deprive the Yanquis of Venezuelan crude?
University of Chicago poli-sci prof Robert Pape might be a little hyperbolic here&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7jnVYE9R3ln8UNNFFjIlRy/4a02e1870a6e96d901cc8fd0fcf26006/FMF-Issue-01-15-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&hellip; but then again, he&rsquo;s the world authority on suicide bombing, so his warnings shouldn&rsquo;t be dismissed out of hand.
Is it any wonder that last week Trump floated the idea of the U.S. taxpayer <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/james-altucher-back-on-the-bitcoin-train">subsidizing</a> Big Oil&rsquo;s investment in Venezuela?&nbsp;
One wag on social media likens the scheme to Obamacare for the health insurers &mdash; &ldquo;Trumpcare for the oil industry.&rdquo;
<ul>
<li>Meanwhile, Chinese firms like CNPC keep a significant presence in Venezuela &mdash; and that hasn&rsquo;t changed even with former President Nicolas Maduro sitting in a New York lockup. For whatever reason, you don&rsquo;t see much about that angle of the story in Western media&hellip;</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Affordability and the American Dream
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-end-of-affordability">Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a> resonated with readers &mdash; especially the two charts laying bare how the American Dream seems out of reach for so many.
&ldquo;I thought your Jan. 13th 5 Bullets was on point, particularly the way you anchored data to lived experience rather than official narratives. The affordability breakdown you describe is real, persistent and increasingly undeniable.
&ldquo;A challenge I continue to wrestle with regarding economic machinations is whether we sometimes mistake mechanisms for causes. The Fed, subsidies, tariffs and red tape clearly matter; outcomes, however, are remarkably consistent across administrations, parties and policy regimes. The same small group keeps winning, while most Americans keep falling behind.
&ldquo;That persistent result makes me wonder whether the deeper story is less about ideology or incompetence and more about incentive structures and ownership models that quietly shape outcomes regardless of who&rsquo;s &lsquo;in charge.&rsquo; The system keeps performing exactly as designed, despite which actor appears to be steering it.
&ldquo;I often think about this in terms of two money games: a collaborative, value-creating, making game that sustains the real economy and a competitive, zero-sum taking game that overlays and increasingly dominates it. Whether or not it&rsquo;s a frame worth naming, it&rsquo;s one I can&rsquo;t seem to unsee once the patterns are laid side by side.
&ldquo;Always appreciate the clarity of your thinking.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It seems to me that when you view a number of charts that productivity and affordability have widened the gap since a certain date in 1971,&rdquo; writes another &mdash; &ldquo;when Nixon took us off the gold standard.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Until then, the gap between the two was quite consistent.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I'm no economist, but in viewing some of these charts it was about that time when the gap really began to widen. What is the Paradigm team's thought on this?&rdquo;
Dave responds: Well, we don&rsquo;t all think alike around here, but I think you&rsquo;re onto something &mdash; and so does the operator of <a href="https://wtfhappenedin1971.com">this website</a> &mdash; who we hasten to add has no connection with us.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Good information here, but you missed a big piece of why Americans of median income are struggling with the almighty dollar being so almighty weak today,&rdquo; writes one more.
&ldquo;Check out the Solari report on Substack. $21 trillion missing? My guess is that this would be a huge factor in the overall numbers of everything you include on your charts. $6.5 trillion in 2015 alone...
&ldquo;FRAUD is the biggest problem we have today, and have had for some time. Everyone (or most) in government at every level everywhere is on this gravy train, and it is not going to stop. Another $750 million just took off from Minnesota bound for Somalia yesterday &mdash; all cash in suitcases, and we just seem to let it happen. And Bessent says 10% of all federal money is not accounted for.
&ldquo;So what went wrong?&rdquo;
Dave: I&rsquo;m familiar with the research you reference &mdash; even wrote about it when Catherine Austin Fitts and Michigan State&rsquo;s Mark Skidmore first issued it in 2017. (And I revisited it <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-vs-the-pentagon">last year</a> when the DOGE boys were supposed to be auditing the Pentagon. Remember that?)
To be clear, the $21 trillion in &ldquo;undocumented adjustments&rdquo; at the Pentagon and HUD from 1998&ndash;2015 aren&rsquo;t all fraudulent necessarily. It&rsquo;s just that there&rsquo;s no clear paper trail, such is the sloppy nature of government recordkeeping.
Anyway, I will gently disagree: There will always be &ldquo;waste, fraud and abuse&rdquo; in government. It&rsquo;s just the nature of the beast. The key is to shrink government to a size where the inevitable fraud will be a rounding error!

FMF-Issue-01-15-26(Featured)

After 25 Years of Locked Doors, a Door Opens

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Portfolio&rsquo;s Great. Why Am I So Unhappy?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The story of investing during 2025 can be summed up as the tale of Nvidia and Newmont.
Nvidia was the darling of the tech-adjacent &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo;... the poster child for the AI age&hellip; the object of endless discussion on CNBC and investing message boards.
NVDA began the year around $137 and ended at $187 &mdash; a solid gain of 36.5%, more than double the performance of an S&amp;P 500 index fund.
In contrast, no one talked about Newmont Corp. NEM is the biggest gold-mining company in the world&hellip; but both Newmont and the gold-mining sector as a whole went unloved, overlooked, under the radar.
NEM began the year around $37 and ended just shy of $100 &mdash; a stunning one-year gain of 170%. And almost no one noticed.
I don&rsquo;t even remember when I started investing in the precious metals space in earnest; the easily-accessible records from my brokerage account go back only 10 years. I didn&rsquo;t do anything wild or crazy &mdash; just dollar-cost averaging into the Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHYS), the Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV) and the Tocqueville Gold Fund of mining stocks (now under the Sprott umbrella trading as SGDLX).
Through all the ups and downs &mdash; gold collapsed from $1,900 in 2011 to $1,050 in 2015 &mdash; I held fast. I had every confidence that the outperformance of precious metals during the 1970s and the 2000s would recur sooner or later.
2025 was the year my patience started to pay off, gold ending the year north of $4,300.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And I have every confidence the party&rsquo;s just getting started. Which is really depressing to think about.
Yes, depressing. On a profound level, the outperformance of the precious metals sector &mdash; and the boost it&rsquo;s given to my portfolio &mdash; gives me no joy.
The problem is that precious metals &mdash; and the natural resource space as a whole &mdash; usually outperform at a time when the world is going to hell in a handbag.
Think about the Great Depression, when &mdash; as we saw in yesterday&rsquo;s edition &mdash; the term &ldquo;American Dream&rdquo; first came into widespread use.
It was an awful time for both the economy and the stock market. But among the best performing stocks of the 1930s were two gold-mining names &mdash; Homestake Mining and Dome Mines. A dollar invested in Homestake in 1928 would have turned into $1.97 by 1932&hellip; $4.95 by year-end 1933&hellip; and $6.40 by the end of 1934.
The natural-resource sector also thrived during the 1970s &mdash; when inflation was ravaging everyday Americans and the era of post-WWII prosperity ground to a halt. (I recall encountering the term &ldquo;Rust Belt&rdquo; in U.S. News &amp; World Report way back then.)
The gold price zoomed from $35 to over $800&hellip; while individual mining names performed even better. Energy names also thrived during this time.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Like it or not, gold&rsquo;s success these days goes hand-in-hand with an American Dream that seems ever more elusive.
I&rsquo;ve been anticipating something like this for the better part of two decades. It gives me no joy that it&rsquo;s coming to pass.
Gold&rsquo;s rise in the 2020s is a global vote of no-confidence in the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasury debt.
Uncle Sam is racking up enormous budget deficits relative to the size of the economy. Politicians in decades gone by could justify deficits of that scale during a world war, a global financial crisis or a pandemic. But none of that is happening now.
It&rsquo;s no coincidence gold took off in 2022 when Washington froze the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank. Governments around the world, wary it could happen to them too, have loaded up on gold as an alternative to dollars and Treasuries.
It&rsquo;s still the early innings. &ldquo;Private institutional investors have gold allocations of below 2.0% of total assets,&rdquo; Paradigm&rsquo;s Jim Rickards reminded us last month.
&ldquo;If that expanded to a mere 4.0% allocation, there&rsquo;s not enough gold in the world at today&rsquo;s prices to fill those orders.&rdquo;
And so it goes with all manner of natural resources &mdash; tangible wealth. Precious metals, base metals, energy, agriculture&hellip;
Yes, the gains to date have been fantastic. But it&rsquo;s still, at the latest, the fourth inning.
Now I&rsquo;ll hand it off to Emily for the rest of today&rsquo;s edition&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Powell Panic
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Not all breaking news matters. The latest story about Jerome Powell is a perfect example,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;By now, you&rsquo;ve seen the headlines&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7p7pIUO3CNYfimfNJPPuuP/052df3a5371e9c7359a16c474871abdd/FMF-Issue-01-14-26_1_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: New York Times
&ldquo;Stocks traded lower and risk assets wobbled as commentators speculated whether this is the beginning of some grand unraveling.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;It was simply the opening of an investigation. Yet the market reacted as if the most extreme interpretation were already fact,&rdquo; Enrique points out.
&ldquo;If you zoom out and look at what actually matters right now, the disconnect becomes obvious&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Market strength has been broadening, not narrowing</li>
<li>Leadership is no longer confined to a handful of mega-cap names</li>
<li>Interest rates have been drifting lower, easing financial conditions rather than tightening them</li>
<li>Oil prices are down, which acts as a tax cut for consumers and businesses alike</li>
<li>And corporate earnings growth remains solid, with margins holding up better than most feared just a few quarters ago.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Against that backdrop, a knee-jerk sell-off tied to the announcement of an investigation [isn&rsquo;t] just overblown &mdash; it&rsquo;s absurd.
&ldquo;To prove my point, here&rsquo;s a great chart from one of my favorite financial voices, Charlie Bilello from Creative Planning. [It] highlights the market's reaction (or lack thereof) to major historical events:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7veXqfi4nzR9OnOgEqTipe/e9d74966ff3833407e30ddfac90647e5/FMF-Issue-01-14-26_2_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Creative Planning
&ldquo;Even significant events like the 2016 Brexit vote barely registered on S&amp;P total returns,&rdquo; Enrique notes.
&ldquo;If the U.K. leaving the EU after more than four decades barely impacted the S&amp;P 500's trajectory, do you really think this Powell headline will have a lasting impact?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The Powell story checks every box of a classic &lsquo;BTSD&rsquo; setup,&rdquo; Enrique adds. Unfamiliar with the acronym? Buy the Stupidity Dip&hellip;
&ldquo;None of this means volatility disappears or that you should blindly buy every dip,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Context always matters.
&ldquo;But in situations like these, where the reaction is clearly disconnected from fundamentals, the playbook is straightforward.
&ldquo;Slow down. Filter out the noise. And focus on what actually drives markets,&rdquo; Enrique advises.
&ldquo;BTSD isn&rsquo;t just a slogan; it&rsquo;s a mindset. And on occasions like these, it&rsquo;s how investors make real money.
&ldquo;Over and over again, the market sells first and asks questions later,&rdquo; he concludes. &ldquo;When cooler heads prevail, prices quietly recover.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Stocks are hitting the skids this afternoon. The Nasdaq is getting the worst of it; the tech-heavy index is down 1.45% to 23,365. Faring slightly better, the S&amp;P 500 has lost about 1% market cap to 6,895 while the Dow&rsquo;s down 0.50% to 48,935.
Meanwhile, oil&rsquo;s rebounding, up about 0.85% to $61.68 for a barrel of West Texas crude. But precious metals are in record-breaking territory. Gold&rsquo;s up 0.45% to $4,620.20 per ounce, but it&rsquo;s silver that&rsquo;s stealing all the shine: up 5.15% to $90.74.
Crypto, likewise, is rallying today. Bitcoin&rsquo;s up 3.65%, just under $98K, and Ethereum&rsquo;s up 5.35% to $3,375.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Who Pays for the AI Boom?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Trump is making affordability a frontline issue, now aiming squarely at the soaring energy costs tied to America&rsquo;s AI boom.
On Tuesday, Trump announced his administration is partnering with major tech companies to ensure the massive data centers powering artificial intelligence do not push electricity bills higher for American households.
&ldquo;We are the &lsquo;HOTTEST&rsquo; Country in the World, and Number One in AI,&rdquo; Trump wrote on Truth Social. &ldquo;Data Centers are key to that boom, and keeping Americans FREE and SECURE but, the big Technology Companies who build them must &lsquo;pay their own way.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Data centers, especially those designed for AI workloads, consume enormous amounts of electricity and water. A single large facility can use as much power as a small city and up to a million gallons of water per day. The International Energy Agency estimates that global electricity demand from data centers could double in 2026 &mdash; compared with 2022 levels &mdash; roughly equivalent to the annual electricity use of Japan.
Microsoft president Brad Smith details his company&rsquo;s commitments at a White House-area event titled Community-First AI Infrastructure. Smith says Microsoft would ensure its electricity use does not raise local utility rates and that it would forgo tax breaks or discounted power prices in communities hosting its facilities.
The announcement comes amid bipartisan backlash. Communities in states as politically diverse as Oklahoma, Tennessee, Oregon, California, New York and Wisconsin have raised alarms over higher power bills, water strain and environmental impact. In rural Wisconsin, Microsoft recently scrapped plans for a new data center after residents objected to potential electricity rate increases.
Trump has spent his second term courting tech leaders and deregulating AI development to speed innovation. But as affordability pressures mount, the White House is reassessing &mdash; pressing tech giants to absorb the costs of growth rather than passing them onto already stretched-thin American families.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />WFH = City Budget Crisis
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> America&rsquo;s remote-work experiment is no longer reshaping office culture &mdash; it&rsquo;s reshaping city balance sheets.
In a recent Demography Unplugged analysis, demographer Neil Howe and Christian Ford argue that the work-from-home shift has moved beyond workplace policy and into the realm of municipal economics.
While many white-collar employees now split time between home and office, a notable segment remains fully remote. Across U.S. metro areas with populations over 1 million, about 15% of workers now telecommute every day, with even higher concentrations in cities including Austin, Raleigh, Denver and Portland.
Notably, these workers haven&rsquo;t fled urban life altogether. They still live near restaurants, culture and amenities &mdash; but they no longer anchor downtown business districts with daily commutes. As Howe and Ford note: &ldquo;The economic impact on city centers is becoming increasingly hard to ignore.&rdquo;
The most obvious pain point is office real estate. In Austin and Denver, for instance, more than a quarter of office space now sits vacant, the highest share among major metros.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/J1XHhJ9PGUjzbDOBlmKwu/c4225db91925393397ad9975feae1b76/FMF-Issue-01-14-26_3_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Moody&rsquo;s, Demography Unplugged
Those vacancies ripple outward. In San Francisco, the collapse in office demand is expected to reduce property-tax revenue between $150&ndash;200 million per year from 2023&ndash;2028.
Housing markets are also adjusting. According to Parcl Labs, more than half of homes currently listed in Austin and Denver have already reduced their initial asking prices. In Austin alone, residential property values are projected to fall by 10% in 2026 &mdash; a sign that demand has softened, compounded by higher interest rates.
City governments are now responding with austerity. Denver has eliminated city positions equal to 7.6% of its workforce. Austin has scaled back funding for emergency medical services and public parks. San Francisco&rsquo;s mayor has instructed departments to identify $400 million in budget cuts for 2026.
&ldquo;Remote work is no longer just a fight between workers and bosses,&rdquo; say Howe and Ford. It has become a stress test for urban centers &mdash; one that forces cities to shrink and rethink what a downtown economy looks like when fewer people show up for work each morning.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Proof of Life: An App for That
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The hottest new app in China does almost nothing&hellip; And that&rsquo;s precisely the point.
It&rsquo;s called Si Le Ma, which roughly translates to &ldquo;Are You Dead Yet?&rdquo; Once a day, users tap a single oversized green button. Miss two days in a row, and the app automatically emails a designated emergency contact, urging them to physically check on you.
Just basic proof of life.
&ldquo;When I looked at Maslow&rsquo;s hierarchy of needs, I saw that safety needs are deeper and apply to a much broader group of people. That felt like a good direction,&rdquo; says the app&rsquo;s Gen-Z developer Guo.
Guo and his team originally charged 1 RMB (about $0.14) for lifetime access, later raising it to 8 RMB (roughly $1.15). The app reportedly cost around $200 to build.
But the concept &mdash; part utilitarian, part gallows humor &mdash; hit hard, making Are You Dead Yet? the No. 1 paid app on China&rsquo;s Apple App Store while climbing overseas rankings without paid advertising.
Guo&rsquo;s team has since been contacted by more than 60 investors, all clambering for a stake in the parent company, Moonscape Technologies. &ldquo;We knew there would be some traction, but the scale of this completely exceeded our expectations,&rdquo; Guo notes.
The app&rsquo;s popularity reflects reality. According to China&rsquo;s 2020 national census, 25.4% of households consist of just one person, up from 14.5% in 2010. While older adults still dominate that category, more young people are living alone.
The team, however, announced this week it would rebrand the app globally as Demumu, a softer name inspired by viral plush toy Labubu. Boo! &nbsp;
Fans were underwhelmed. On the Chinese social media platform Weibo, one of the most-liked comments says: &ldquo;Baby, your previous name was the reason you went viral.&rdquo;
Indeed&hellip; Take care of yourself, and look out for your neighbors! We&rsquo;ll be back tomorrow.

FMF-Issue-01-14-26(Featured)

Portfolio’s Great. Why Am I Unhappy? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Two Little Charts and the End of Affordability
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.&rdquo;
So wrote the historian James Truslow Adams during the Great Depression in 1931.
It&rsquo;s Adams who&rsquo;s usually credited with popularizing the term &ldquo;American Dream&rdquo; in his book The Epic of America.
&ldquo;It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.&rdquo;
In yesterday&rsquo;s edition, we explored how too many people now feel locked out from that dream &mdash; even as the media yammer about a &ldquo;strong economy.&rdquo; As it turns out, economic statistics don&rsquo;t hold up in the face of many people&rsquo;s lived experience.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But why? What went wrong?
During the long stretch from the end of World War II until the turn of the 21st century, the American Dream still seemed attainable for all.
Everyone willing to put in an honest day&rsquo;s work was able to achieve a more prosperous life. And by and large they did, no matter the income level where they started.
&ldquo;A rising tide lifts all boats,&rdquo; as the saying goes.
But the tide started going out for many people as the calendar turned to 2000 and the dot-com bust set in.
Take a good hard look at the chart below; you can click to enlarge. It came to my attention over a decade ago thanks to Marc Faber, editor of the renowned Gloom, Boom and Doom Report.
&ldquo;If I were to look at the average family income, excluding capital gains, adjusted for inflation between 2002&ndash;2012, it is clear that 90% of these families experienced a decline in real income and another 5% experienced hardly any gains.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1pBnvbMJlitsnT4RzRXQvI/b41025f5e2809f8fc4b98c7f1ec9bd7c/FMF-Issue-01-13-26_1-Enlarged_.png" alt="Click here to learn more" width="540px" /> <a href="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/enlarged-images/FMF-Issue-01-13-26(1-Enlarged).png">[Click to enlarge]</a>
&ldquo;In fact,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;it is shocking that only 0.1% of families achieved substantial gains in real incomes. Yet I find it hard to believe that it is because of these 0.1% that the rest of the population suffered.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Instead, Faber laid the blame where it belongs &mdash; at the feet of the Federal Reserve.
&ldquo;The Fed's monetary policies have failed to boost the real incomes of most people but have had an enormously favorable impact on just 0.1%...
"In fact, I would argue that the Fed is fully responsible for the fact that 90% of U.S. families have had declining real incomes (inflation adjusted) over the last 10 years or so (as money printing raised the prices of energy, food, education, transportation, health care, insurance, etc.) and have experienced a decline in their net worth. After all, it was the Fed that repeatedly and deliberately created and continues to create bubbles, which benefit only a minority, while hurting the majority."
Yes, the chart is over a decade old. Your editor has searched high and low for something more recent. But really, do you think matters have gotten any better?
One of the economists who compiled the chart published a paper on the same general theme, updated through 2022.
His conclusion is that the upheaval wrought by the government&rsquo;s reaction to COVID made the income disparity even worse than it was before &mdash; stimmy checks notwithstanding.
From 2019&ndash;2022, the bottom 99% saw their after-inflation incomes grow by 1.0% &mdash; compared with the top 1%, who enjoyed 16.1% growth.
&ldquo;Hence,&rdquo; wrote UC-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, &ldquo;top 1% families captured 81% of total real income growth per family&rdquo; during that four-year span.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s a second chart that helps tell the rest of the story.
Since 2006 or so, economist Mark Perry from the American Enterprise Institute has published what&rsquo;s become known to his followers as the &ldquo;Chart of the Century.&rdquo;
His most recent update was only six months ago. It speaks for itself&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2WTryNvy3pxLwxWCGxmggD/efbfd628a3cae91c526588fd2df64df3/FMF-Issue-01-13-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Look at what tops the list. Health care and higher education &mdash; the two things that government has subsidized the most&hellip; mucked up the most&hellip; and made ever more inaccessible to the middle class.
Health care spending in the United States now totals nearly $15,000 per person per year &mdash; by far the highest in the world, 61% higher than No. 2 Switzerland. For those lucky enough to have insurance, premiums rise at a pace far outstripping the official inflation rate. (If you&rsquo;re a W2 employee, you probably noticed a meaningful hit to your first paycheck of the year.)
Meanwhile, the promise of higher ed &mdash; go deep into debt so you can achieve a higher standard of living than you would without the sheepskin &mdash; rings hollow to an entire generation of young adults.
And so the American Dream feels ever more out of reach: Here are the depressing results from a Wall Street Journal-NORC survey conducted last summer.
<ul>
<li>Only 25% of Americans believe they have &ldquo;a good chance of improving their standard of living&rdquo; &mdash; an all-time low in data going back to 1987</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Nearly 70% believe hard work does not translate to getting ahead &mdash; a low in 15 years of survey data</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And most revealing&hellip; Over 75% doubt that children today will live a better life than their parents.</li>
</ul>
Is it any wonder the U.S. fertility rate has hit historic lows?
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for today. As it happens, we have inflation numbers to tackle next&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Markets Today: Inflation, Earnings, Small-Biz Sentiment
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Both earnings season and economic numbers are coming into view as we approach midmonth.
The Labor Department released the December consumer price index this morning. The official inflation rate held steady at 2.7%. The big drivers were shelter, groceries and meals out (oh, and health care); prices for gasoline fell, as did used vehicles.
As always, any relationship between the official number and your own cost of living is purely coincidental.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase started earnings season on a sour note. The headline numbers beat analyst expectations, but revenue from investment banking fees missed expectations badly. With that, JPM is down 2.8% on the day.
Amid those cross-currents, the S&amp;P 500 rests at 6,962 &mdash; down less than a quarter percent from yesterday&rsquo;s record close.
As for precious metals, gold is holding onto yesterday&rsquo;s gains &mdash; inching higher into record territory, now over $4,600. And silver&rsquo;s rocket ride still isn&rsquo;t over &mdash; up $3.26 as we write to $88.40.
Crypto is hanging tough, with Bitcoin at $93,577 and Ethereum at $3,189.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Small-business owners feel sanguine going into 2026 &mdash; if the Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business is any indication.
The headline number for December rings in at 99.5 &mdash; up from 99.0 the month before and the highest reading in four months. It&rsquo;s also above the long-term average for this survey, which the NFIB has conducted for over 50 years.
&ldquo;While Main Street business owners remain concerned about taxes, they anticipate favorable economic conditions in 2026 due to waning cost pressures, easing labor challenges and an increase in capital investments,&rdquo; says NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg.
On the portion of the survey where owners are asked to identify their single most important problem, taxes have rocketed higher.
In the November survey, taxes were in third place &mdash; cited by 14% of respondents. But in December, taxes zoomed all the way up to No. 1, cited by 20% &mdash; the highest since May 2021. And &ldquo;quality of labor&rdquo; is still up there, with 19% saying their biggest problem is finding qualified help.
Inflation was cited by 12% and poor sales by 10%. Everything else was in single digits.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m From the Government and I&rsquo;m Here to Help&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The proverbial &ldquo;geopolitical tensions&rdquo; appear to be pushing oil prices over $61 for the first time in two months.
Last night, Donald Trump declared that &ldquo;Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America.&rdquo;
So&hellip; the trade truce with China is off? The 50% tariff on India goes to 75%?
China is Iran&rsquo;s biggest trading partner. India is no slouch. Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are also major trade partners with Iran.
This isn&rsquo;t the first time, but it&rsquo;s now apparent that Trump tariffs are not aimed exclusively at &ldquo;leveling the playing field&rdquo; when it comes to trade, nor raising revenue for a cash-strapped federal government.
&ldquo;They are sanctions by another name,&rdquo; tweets Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> At midmorning today, Trump upped the ante &mdash; posting a message on social media addressed to protesters in Iran: &ldquo;Help is on the way.&rdquo;
And you thought the U.S. bombing of Iran&rsquo;s nuclear energy facilities last summer was a one-and-done, right?
At the end of last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid another call on the White House and Trump moved the goalposts: Iran&rsquo;s ballistic missiles became a potential casus belli.
Now it seems the issue is anti-government protests &mdash; which, according to The Jerusalem Post, are being ginned up by Mossad agents inside Iran.
Tempting as it might be to dismiss Trump&rsquo;s statements as bluster, the U.S. State Department is urging all dual U.S.-Iranian citizens to leave Iran now. &ldquo;Have a plan for departing Iran that does not rely on U.S. government help,&rdquo; says its advisory.
And we haven&rsquo;t even gotten to Venezuela yet. That&rsquo;ll have to wait till tomorrow&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Thought for the Day
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Along the lines of today&rsquo;s Bullet No. 1&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2OZS1jwZEDb0n67tJwQBjs/c58c39801093a27cef69d976d64e5e5e/FMF-Issue-01-13-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Who We Are and What We&rsquo;re All About
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Thank you for sharing information about Paradigm Press and what it entails,&rdquo; a reader writes after last week&rsquo;s &ldquo;Who We Are and What We&rsquo;re All About&rdquo; edition.
&ldquo;Although I&rsquo;ve been a long-time subscriber, it was refreshing to read. I've also subscribed to&hellip;
[Here we&rsquo;ll redact the names of several competitors&hellip;]
&ldquo;Based on my experience, Paradigm Press stands out as the best among them. The high quality of service, friendly customer support team and transparency about products are quite unique.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The 5 Bullets on your philosophy has me pondering the past five years,&rdquo; writes a reflective reader.
&ldquo;Most of my life was paycheck to paycheck. Then (age 70) I inherited enough to invest $15,000.
&ldquo;Admittedly, I am an investment advisory &lsquo;fan.&rsquo; Over five years I have spent over $35,000 on various investment services. Here is the joy of it all: By studying, the portfolio is up to $135,000.
&ldquo;Paradigm Press is my favorite right now. Why?
<ul>
<li>This national and international climate is the realm of Jim Rickards. Presidential decisions have a particularly powerful impact on the markets. Jim and the team sift through the noise and give readers the &lsquo;signal.&rsquo; It saves time, and sanity. With investing, it creates a wide perspective in time and space. [We are thinking in terms of decades, and of every nation on the planet.] Peace and plan come with perspective.</li>
</ul>
Jim always recommended gold. In this world, gold is truly &lsquo;shining.&rsquo; Gold, silver and many minerals are shining. Gold is the everything hedge.
<ul>
<li>Reliable information is rare and priceless. Elon Musk risked a lot to take a stand for free speech. Jim Rickards, and team, take that freedom and publish truth and insights. Every person who is well informed radiates a light of truth that protects the whole world. The value of truth blesses everyone on the planet: all nations and generations to come. What a joy to be a part of knowledge!</li>
</ul>
An educated populace makes &lsquo;democracy&rsquo; work!
<ul>
<li>Beyond the perspective on investment trends, and the knowledge on current events, for its own value, Paradigm Press completes a lot of research on companies. A lot of research. Some speculative plays are for a week or a month, some investments develop over years. The time frames are reasonably clear in the discussions.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Yes, 2025 was a bull year. One theme at the Nashville conference was to &lsquo;make the profits, and KEEP them.&rsquo; Investors will need to be savvy in the days ahead!
&ldquo;Another note. We give 10% to our worship community. That provides a certain detachment, and a deep enthusiasm for earning. It gives us a sober awareness of the preciousness of resources.
&ldquo;Thank you all, for all you do. You are a &lsquo;motley&rsquo; crew, presenting facets of the diamond of the investment picture. Thank you for the enthusiasm you bring to this adventure.
&ldquo;Blessings for 2026.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thank you for your kind note.
As I said last week, we don&rsquo;t want customers &mdash; we want happy customers. Glad we can oblige &mdash; although we take nothing for granted and we know trust has to be earned anew every day.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I look forward to the 5 Bullets probably more than the subscriptions that I have!&rdquo; says another reader. &ldquo;Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I love your stuff,&rdquo; says another. &ldquo;This is the only email where I learn what is truly going on in our country and the world. Thank you for your direct and honest writings!&rdquo;
Dave: Thank you, sir. However, I&rsquo;ve long warned that this e-letter is only part of a balanced informational diet!
Along those lines&hellip; it&rsquo;s getting so much harder to separate the news from the noise anymore &mdash; even for an old-school journalist like myself.
Sometime in the weeks ahead I hope to devote an entire issue to why that&rsquo;s the case &mdash; and what we can do about it to remain an informed citizenry. Stay tuned&hellip;